


'Til the End of the Night

by quantumducky



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Eventual Happy Ending, Fantasy, Gen, Some Fluff, Some angst, all the ingredients for a good adventure, some weird nonsense
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-16
Updated: 2019-03-25
Packaged: 2019-03-31 23:10:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 33,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13985307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quantumducky/pseuds/quantumducky
Summary: While Thomas is asleep, Roman dreams himself into a predicament he can't get out of alone.  Fortunately, he has three friends who are eager to... er, willing... look, at least they're going, alright? It's quest time!T rating for some fantasy violence/described injuries (nothing graphic) and the possibility of cursing (the swearword kind, not the magic kind, although that's there too.) Check chapter notes for specific warnings.





	1. In which Roman phones a friend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First time writing for this fandom, it's a little intimidating :')
> 
> Chapter warnings: mild injuries (not described), being trapped (if you don't like that this is probably not the story for you), let me know if I missed anything

Roman _may_ have been _slightly_ trapped in a tower.  It was a long story, which did not refer to its actual length so much as to the fact that he didn’t want to tell it.  He would hate to have to admit to anyone that he’d climbed up here to rescue a princess, as one does, only she’d told him there was wifi in there and then, when he’d joined her inside to partake of the free internet, vanished completely.  In the moments it had taken him to look around and realize she’d been an illusion all along, magical vines had grown to almost completely cover the only window, impervious to his sword and his inventive curses alike. This had to be the work of that foul sorceress, the Dragon Witch.  He’d said as much out loud, not that anyone was around to hear him.

He needed to get out of here.  He couldn’t see anything lying around that would be of use, although he couldn’t see much of anything at _all_ with the vines blocking all but a few slivers of light.  Of course, he still had his creative powers- the world around him was in story-mode at the moment, so he couldn’t do anything too unreasonable, but he _was_ able to pull a lantern from thin air and light it with a wave of his hand.

Taking a better look revealed only that, just as he’d thought, the room was pretty much empty.  These tower scenarios weren’t exactly designed for convenience of escape. How would he ever get to save anyone if they went and left on their own before he got there, after all?  That wouldn’t be any fun. It had never been an issue before, given that those inconvenienced were never real people... unlike now. He threw the lantern at the window in a combination of anger and hope that it might do something.  Flames splashed over the vines only to die out a moment later, extinguished by a dark flash of magic. The barrier was warded against every attack he could come up with, even the ones he was stretching the rules to even be able to try, and tossing an arcane explosive at a wall showed that the whole room was just as indestructible.  And the force sent him flying across the room, which hurt. And he had to make a new lantern now.

“What have I ever done to deserve this?” he demanded of the ceiling, gesturing to the overall situation with his free hand.  It didn’t answer. He sighed loudly and collapsed to the floor, sitting against the back wall. He couldn’t stand feeling useless like this, coming up against a challenge he couldn’t dance around or make a way out of- and in his own realm, too, the place he came to get _rid_ of frustration.  While he’d been looking for a way out and coming up empty, what little light made it in had dimmed to nothing, and noticing that made him also notice how tired he was.  As much as he hated to give up on… anything ever, really… there was no part of him that wanted to move right now. Time worked differently here and sleeping through the night would only take a minute of real-world time, so he might as well just put the lantern out and… close his eyes...

When Roman woke up, it was still about eleven at night back in reality, and he was about eleven different types of sore.  It seemed his body wasn’t a fan of getting knocked into walls and then falling asleep on a stone floor, who knew? Which was hypocritical, because it hadn’t been his _brain’s_ idea to pass out like that.  When he got up and bit back a groan, however, it wasn’t because of the protests from his muscles, but because of what he saw.

The tower room was furnished now.  There was a bed, a chest in which he could see folded clothes, and a small table holding an array of food and the lantern, which had been mysteriously lighted again.  It bordered on cozy, which wasn’t a problem in and of itself- he liked cozy- but what it _meant_ most definitely was.  The world was expecting him to be staying here for quite a while.  It was official: in the terms of the story that was now unfolding, his role was no longer that of an adventuring prince, but a witch’s prisoner locked in a tower, and _that_ meant the very laws of this reality would make sure he couldn’t escape on his own, even if he thought of something that would normally work.  There was nothing else to be done: as much as he would hate it, he was going to have to call for help.

Fortunately, the tower really did have wifi, because he certainly wasn’t going to have good reception out here.  He sat on the bed, which was decently comfortable, opened the list of contacts on his phone and looked over them for a brief moment.  Easy decision, really- two out of three would immediately make fun of him for getting himself into this situation in the first place. He called Patton.

Patton was half-asleep on the couch in a pile of blankets, midway through a TV show he was no longer paying attention to, when the ringing of his phone jolted him back to consciousness.  He turned the TV off and answered at the last second before it would have gone to voicemail.  “Hello?”

“Hello,” Roman said on the other end.  He didn’t usually wait to be prompted to start talking about whatever he called for, that was odd.

“Roman!”  He sounded awake now.  “I thought you were busy with one of your adventures in the Imagination right now?  Fighting bad guys and saving various royalty and stuff? Not that I’m not happy to hear from you, of course!”

“Er, about that, it’s-- you have to promise not to laugh,” he interrupted himself.

“Of course, I would never laugh at you!  Unless you were making a joke, because then it wouldn’t be very nice not to…”  That train of thought was getting off track, he realized. “What’s wrong?”

“Well… It seems that this time, _I’ve_ become the royalty in need of rescuing.”  He explained recent events, or at least a slightly edited version of them that made him sound cooler, and paused at appropriate moments for a reaction.  Patton did not disappoint.

“Oh, no!” he gasped.  “What are you going to do?”

“I’m not sure,” Roman said, which was mostly true.  “This has all been rather confusing.”

“We’ve got to figure _something_ out…”

Patton was too busy fretting to notice Logan rise up in front of him until he spoke.  “I don’t mean to intrude on… whatever’s happening here, but if you two need help figuring something out, I’d be happy to contribute a more rational perspective.  What’s the problem this time?”

“Roman is--” Patton interrupted himself with a surprised squeak as Virgil appeared as well, balanced on the arm of the couch.

“Patton, are you okay?  I felt...” He trailed off slightly and looked between the two of them, fidgeting with the hood of his jacket as if he expected to need it up soon.  “Somebody tell me what’s going on.”

Logan started telling him what _he_ knew, despite the fact that he knew pretty much nothing.  Virgil quickly realized this and responded sarcastically, starting an argument over whether Logan should be saying anything at all right now, and meanwhile Roman was talking into Patton’s ear asking what was happening over there, and there were so many freakin’ _words_ he couldn’t process _any_ of it.

“Guys,” he tried to interrupt.  “Hello?” They didn’t seem to hear him.  He cleared his throat and mustered his sternest voice, which wasn’t _very_ stern, really, but they would know it meant he was serious.   _“Logan!  Virgil! Quit it!”_  They stopped bickering and turned back in his direction, looking sheepish.

“Sorry.”

“I apologize, that was- immature.  Please continue.”

“Alright, well, Roman- you know what, I should just put him on speakerphone.  I’m putting you on speakerphone, Roman, okay? Can you tell Logan and Virgil what you just told me?”

Patton set his phone on the table, and the first thing they all heard from Roman was an annoyed sigh.  “If I _must,”_ he said reluctantly.  Virgil muffled a laugh with his sleeve- he could just _hear_ the pout in his voice.  “This is so embarrassing,” he muttered.  “I was tricked… by a very cunning witch… and now I am unfortunately, er, stuck, in a tower, in a _story_.  I would, uh… greatly appreciate some assistance, honestly.”

Logan blinked.  “Well, that’s simple enough to fix.  All we need to do is wake Thomas up and--”

“No!”  Roman coughed.  “I mean- he does need to be well rested to face the day’s challenges, you know how erratic his sleeping habits can be- we shouldn’t resort to disturbing him unless there are truly no other options.  ...And have I mentioned that this is _very embarrassing?_  It’s bad enough that you all know now, I’m not telling Thomas as well!”  And if _Thomas_ knew something, _everyone_ did, or could if they chose, at least.  Some of those “dark” sides would _never_ let Roman live this down if they heard.

“Okay, so you need someone to get you out.”  Surprisingly, or maybe not all that surprisingly, Logan knew a bit about the technicalities of the Imagination.  Once he’d found out technicalities _existed,_ he couldn’t resist asking questions until Roman yelled at him to stop killing his fun by trying to dissect how it worked.  “Why not just conjure up a hero with those fanciful mind-powers of yours?”

“I… can’t.  Not without being part of the action myself.  I can’t move the focus of the story to anyone who isn’t real.”

“What do you mean you _can’t?”_  Virgil dropped onto the couch beside Patton, legs folded under himself, the better to yell into the phone.  “It’s _your world,_ you _literally created it,_ what even- what does that even _mean?_ Just tell it to stop, or whatever.”

“It’s not always that easy,” Roman snapped back.  “I can’t just do whatever I want- I mean, I _can,_ but… look, I didn’t want it to be that easy, alright?  I need a _challenge_ sometimes if I want to improve!  Anyway, I’m sure _your_ room is so much more manageable,” he added seconds before wondering if this was going too far, “what with how it nearly made Patton cry after being there for ten minutes and all.  I suppose _that_ was all entirely on purpose.”

“My room is _a room,_ Roman, and you’re in an infinite world with _way_ more dangerous stuff in it that I had _kind of assumed you could always control,_ but okay, fine.  Figures your realm would make everything have to be about you.  What’s _your_ plan, if none of ours are good enough?”

“We-ell…”  A slight pause.  “It doesn’t _have_ to be about me, thank you very much, Mr. Tall-Dark-and-Even-More-Dark.  In theory, if someone _else_ , another person who exists in some real sense, were to enter the realm, and take on the role of a traveling hero…”

“Oh!  That sounds fun!” Patton exclaimed, at the same moment as Virgil said, “Absolutely not.”  Logan just shook his head skeptically.

“Pleeease?” Roman and Patton said in unison.  Patton was even giving them his best puppy-dog eyes.  How did they sync up like that without being able to see each other?  Why was it almost _working?_

“Roman _just said_ he lost control of his stupid realm, and now you want to skip on in there after him and probably get eaten by a rogue dragon or something?”

“I thought the dragon was a witch, not a rogue…”

That got a snort of laughter from Virgil despite himself, and a pained sigh from Logan.  Virgil tried to regain his look of “why are you even considering this,” but before he could quite get there Roman was talking again.

“Guys, it’s completely safe, I promise.  On my honor as a prince, which, in here, I actually am.  Nothing in this realm has ever so much as scratched me unless I decided it could, and I’m not going to tell anything it can hurt any of _you._  Like Patton said, it will be _fun!_  Just a quick walk through the Imagination- which is _beautiful,_ I designed the landscape myself- I can give you a proper tour once you get me down, and we’ll all be back long before Thomas wakes up.”  There was a muffled noise and a distant curse-substitute as he almost knocked the lantern over with the gestures they couldn’t see him making.

“Yes!”  Patton was practically bouncing in his seat.  “Can we go? Logan? Virgil? Please? I really wanna go and it wouldn’t be as fun by myself, _please?”_

Logan considered it.  “I still think it would be much easier to just inform Thomas of the situation-”

_“Thank_ you,” Virgil sighed.

“-but if Roman doesn’t want to be summoned-”

“-which I _don’t-”_

“-he can choose to ignore it.  Knowing how stubborn he can be, it might in fact be less hassle to just go along with his plan.”

“You’re actually agreeing to this?  Are you _serious_?”

Logan pointed silently to his necktie.

“Ugh, _fine.”_  Virgil threw his hands up in defeat.  “But if anything bad happens, it won’t be _my_ fault.”

Patton touched Virgil’s knee softly, trying not to startle him with limited success.  “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to, you know. If you’d rather stay here and wait for us to get back, that’s completely fine.”

“No, I’m going.”  He looked sideways at Patton with the ghost of a teasing smile on his face.  “I mean, _somebody_ has to keep the rest of you out of trouble, you’re not getting away from me _that_ easily.”

“We wouldn’t want to,” Patton assured him, while Logan breathed a sigh of relief that he wouldn’t be left to corral the rather impulsive emotional side by himself.

Roman’s slightly tinny voice broke in.  “Are you coming, then?” He was trying not to sound like he cared very much, which was revealing in itself.

Patton grinned.  “Yep! Just as soon as we get ready!  Ooh-” he turned to the other two in the room- “can I say something?”

Logan shared a confused glance with Virgil.  “...I would assume so?”

Patton didn’t bother to clarify, just grabbed one of their hands each, throwing them up above all their heads as he cheered.  “Who’s ready for an ADVENTURE?!”


	2. In which Logan gets rekt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fantasy world! Fantasy outfits! Arguing over Logan's fashion choices! Magic!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: minor injury, a bit of a worry spiral

Half an hour later, the three sides stood before a portal to the realm of Imagination, each prepared for the trip in his own way.  Roman still wouldn’t answer all Logan’s questions, so he’d turned to Google to try and figure out what he should expect of a world based in fantasy.  He thought he had a decent idea now, though he would have liked a bit more time. Patton was holding a bag of “supplies,” which no one needed to look inside to know it was really just full of junk food, plus a few bandaids he’d found in a desk drawer and thrown in.  To be fair, he’d also remained on the phone with Roman until a few seconds ago to keep him synced with the real world instead of making him wait two weeks in his time, so he’d been a bit distracted. Virgil had his headphones around his neck- not plugged into anything, just there for their own sake- and his hands in the surprisingly deep pockets of his hoodie, making sure his stash of  _ actual _ emergency snacks and various survival tools he hoped not to need hadn’t fallen out.

The portal was right in front of them, swirling with a dizzying array of bright colors and seeming almost impatient.  “Well,” Logan said, straightening his tie and taking a deep breath, “are you both ready?” Virgil gave a small nod. Patton handed Logan his bag, freeing his own hands to take hold of their respective arms so they wouldn’t end up in different places.  They walked in together.

For a few seconds, all they could see was a blinding blur of color.  (Virgil would have complained if he’d had a mouth at the time.) Their vision cleared gradually, and they found themselves on a hilltop with a good view of the surrounding landscape.  The place really was beautiful. The sky was clear, the grass soft and perfectly green, and butterflies danced between the wildflowers that seemed to be everywhere. A soft, sweet-smelling breeze carried the songs of unseen birds.  It was… perfect, the way grass and flowers and butterflies  _ should _ be but never quite live up to in real life.  Each tree was the ideal version of a tree. Patton turned in a slow circle, hands pressed to his face, speechlessly taking in the fields, forests and distant mountains.  He’d known it would be impressive- it was Roman’s work, after all, and he’d been improving on it for years- but the detail, and the  _ scale _ of the place… it was beyond anything he could have, well, imagined.  He was jolted from his trance when he came full circle and saw the others, standing a little further down the hill, for the first time since going through the portal.

“Well, aren’t you two dressed up!”

Virgil pulled his hood down over his face and groaned.  “I know, I look stupid, this was a mistake, I don’t know why I tried…”  This was in reference to the fact that he’d turned his hoodie into long, layered mage’s robes in his usual colors, well-worn and repaired in places, with dozens of hidden pockets, sleeves long enough to cover his hands and a thick hood that could block out noise.  A scarflike strip of fabric was attached to the hood, settled around his shoulders for now, but able to hide his face if he chose. His shoes had changed, too, into black leather boots that almost reached his knees. He folded his arms and looked away, now embarrassed by the new look he’d evidently put some thought into.  “Maybe I should just change back before anyone else sees me.”

“Hey, no, you look really cool,” Patton insisted.  “You look like a wizard! A cool wizard! In fact, I can’t  _ i-mage-ine _ a better fantasy outfit for you.”

Virgil smirked at the pun.  “Thanks, Patton.” He pushed his sleeves up to uncover his hands, though they were still mostly hidden by dark purple fingerless gloves that went a third of the way up his arms, and made finger guns toward the third member of their group.   _ “Okay _ , that’s enough of everybody looking at me, what is  _ Logan _ wearing?”

Patton turned, blinked and asked, “Um.  Logan, what  _ are _ you wearing?”

Logan finally looked up from his attempt to memorize their surroundings.  “Well… I was uncertain of the best way to blend into a ‘fantasy’ setting,” he said, gradually sliding into teacher-mode, “and my research told me stories of the kind Roman favors often take place in medieval time periods.  Therefore, I dressed myself in clothing typical to 14th century Europe. This tunic-” he gestured to the item in question, which reached almost to his knees- “is made of wool, as are these chausses, because the fabric makes for good insulation and takes a dye well.”  “Chausses” seemed to be the thick… tights?... he was wearing. Both garments were indeed dyed: the chausses were the same blue as the tie he always wore, while the tunic was black and had his emblem around the neck, hem and the ends of its short sleeves in white thread.  “And the--”

“Hold up,” Virgil interrupted, “I’m sure this is all fascinating but  _ what is on your feet.” _

Patton looked down, and tried (and failed) not to laugh.  Logan’s shoes were perfectly normal- short leather boots- but  _ over _ them…  “Platform… sandals?”

“I was wondering why you were so much taller than me,” Virgil remarked.

“They are not  _ sandals,” _ Logan said stiffly.  “They’re called pattens, and--”

“Oh, like-!”

“Yes, like your name, they’re spelled differently, let me finish.  They’re wooden platforms designed to strap over shoes and put a few inches between the wearer and the ground, so as to keep their feet dry and protect the leather of the shoes.”

“Well, I  _ do _ try to lift you up!”

Logan closed his eyes for a moment with a pained expression.  Patton just looked pleased with himself. “...Ignoring that remark,  _ as I was saying, _ undergarments of the period were usually made of linen, which feels much better on the skin than wool, I think you’ll agree.”  He gestured to the long-sleeved shirt layered under his tunic, and lifted the edge of said tunic a bit to reveal breeches. Virgil looked horrified, and not for the reasons one might expect.

“Are you, Logan Sanders,” he said in a strangled voice, “wearing shorts tucked into knee-socks?”

_ “No! _  I  _ told _ you, it’s--”  He cut himself off with a frustrated noise.  “At least I tried! All Patton did was tie a blanket around his shoulders, why don’t you go interrogate  _ him _ about his clothing choices?”

They both looked over.  “It’s a cloak,” Patton corrected cheerfully, spinning in a circle to show it off.  It was a lot like his cat hoodie- ears and all- except that instead of a hoodie it was a long cloak, fastened in the front by the topmost of three buttons, with a fluffy white lining.  It really did resemble a blanket, and he hadn’t altered the rest of his clothes at all.

“...Still better than whatever nerdy mistake of a new fashion scene you’re trying to invent here.”

“It’s HISTORICALLY ACCURATE!”

Both Virgil and Patton jumped at the sudden volume.  Neither had realized how much the dissing of his outfit was actually bothering him, but… now that they thought about it, he did seem to have tried hard on it.

“Okay,” Virgil said, taking a deep breath.  “Logan, I’m sorry I made fun of your outfit, even though it was totally justified and I don’t want to be seen with you.  Let’s just… start walking and get this over with.”

“Yes, we shouldn’t waste too much time,” Logan agreed.  Patton was quietly relieved that he wouldn’t have to break up an argument.  They really needed to get Roman back so those two could fight with him and not each other.

They  _ were _ still forgetting one obvious thing, though.  “Um… Guys, which way are we going?”

“Oh.”  Virgil frowned.  “I don’t know. How are we supposed to know that?  Oh this is great, we have no idea where we even are, we’ve been here for like ten minutes and we’re lost.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Patton assured him.  “This would be so much easier if we could talk to Roman again, but I’m not getting any signal out here in the middle of nowhere…”

They heard a ringing noise and turned to stare at Logan, who had already started calling.  “What?” They only kept staring, and he sighed. “We’re in Thomas’s head, and his room definitely has cell service.  There’s no reason to think we wouldn’t.”

Patton blinked at his own phone, which started working again as soon as he absorbed the information.  “Oh.”

Roman picked up after a few seconds, and Logan quickly put him on speaker.  “Hello? What’s going on, have you still not left?”

“We have,” Logan informed him, “but we need directions.  We’re on a hill…”

“It’s so pretty, Roman!” Patton interjected.

“...there’s a wooded area right next to us, mountains in the opposite direction, and a small lake about a mile off equidistant between the two.  Do you know where that is?”

“Okay, uh- hold on, let me find something.”  There were some worrying crashes from Roman’s end.  “How are you even calling me right now? My realm never has any signal, and it sounds like you’re in the middle of nowhere!”

“That’s preposterous, we haven’t actually left Thomas’s house, of course we should be able to call you.”

“Logan decided we could, so we can,” Virgil cut in.  “I’m trying not to think about it too hard in case not believing in it makes it go away.”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Logan and Roman both said, though for different reasons entirely.

Roman sounded confused, which could not possibly be a good sign.  “The Imagination is only supposed to do what  _ I _ think it should do, and I did not think that.”

“Well, Logan sure did!”

“You’ve never had any of us in here before,” Logan mused.  “Maybe  _ anyone _ can influence their own immediate surroundings, given a strong belief that something can, should, or will happen.  We don’t have enough information to know for sure, but it seems likely.”

Patton gasped.  “That’s so cool!  Logan, you made our phones work!”

“We don’t know for sure,” Logan repeated, although he was smiling faintly.  Virgil looked less pleased, but didn’t say anything.

There was one more loud clatter, and Roman announced, “Done!  I can see you now!”

“Wait, like,  _ see us _ see us?”  Virgil looked around suspiciously.

“Well, it doesn’t zoom in very far, but I can see little blobs.”

“Oh thank god.  Wait, how are you--”

“Magic mirror.  I think I recognize the area, let me think… yes!  Okay, you’re on the side closer to the trees, right?  Turn around and go up the hill, there’s a road at the bottom on the opposite side.  Tell me when you see it.”

Logan wasn’t going to let Roman tell him what to do like that, so he waved a hand impatiently at Patton to go do it instead.  Patton didn’t mind and ran up the hill to look, but Virgil, offended on his behalf, gave Logan a look and muttered, “Dude.”

“I see it!” Patton called from the top of the hill.

“Patton has reported that--”

“I heard.”  Roman sounded disconcerted.  “You were right, Logan.”

“What?”

“Don’t take that road- it shouldn't exist and I have no idea where it leads.  There was nothing there until I told you there was and you believed it. I doubt the same trick would work again, the realm is smarter than  _ that _ , but it does prove your theory.”

“This is a  _ highly _ chaotic way to run things,” Logan grumbled.  “But I will admit, the implications are… interesting.  Am I right in thinking that the world around us will now be modified by our thoughts and assumptions throughout our time here?”

“You could say that,” Roman agreed.  “You could also say  _ nothing _ and let  _ me _ explain- seeing as it is my world and all- and then it wouldn’t sound so boring, but we can’t have everything.”

“Boring?  I’m helping you learn new things about your realm, how can that be boring?”

“That’s what I was wondering myself, yet somehow you managed!”

“Can we move on?” Virgil snapped.  He hadn’t spoken in a while and seemed more tense than usual.

Logan blinked at him, confused by his sudden mood shift.  Just a minute ago he’d been fine. “Oh, uh- of course. Roman, please give us some real directions now?”

Roman sighed into the phone to make sure they heard it.  “Fine, fine. You two are no fun, I want Patton in charge of the phone again…  Make for the small town on the other side of those woods there, to the west. There, you can take a room at the inn and have some time to prepare and ask around for information- I don’t exactly know where I am in relation to you, but I’m sure  _ someone _ can tell you something.  I am the prince, after all, people pay attention to what I do.”  His voice took on a dramatic tone as he continued, “It won’t be easy, and you may encounter danger as you forge your path through the wilderness, but I have faith in you!”  His plan to improvise an entire inspirational speech was cut short by a loud beep. “Also, my phone is dying, I’ll be watching you through the mirror, good luck!”

There was a click, then nothing.  Patton wanted to avoid an awkward silence and started walking, humming to himself, only to be brought up short when Virgil grabbed the back of his cloak.

“West is that way, Pat.”

He looked where Virgil was pointing and saw Logan going in a different direction entirely and looking back over his shoulder to wave at them to catch up.  “Oh.”

They reached the woods in a few minutes.  Logan was a bit snippy because he kept nearly tripping over his own feet, but to take the pattens off would be to admit they were silly and impractical.  Virgil had grabbed Patton’s hand in exasperation to stop him wandering off every time he saw something that looked fun, but Patton rolled with it and linked their fingers together, swinging their hands as he walked.  The two of them were following Logan’s lead, since he seemed to know where he was going, and trying not to laugh at his coordination difficulties. The sticks and such on the ground weren’t helping, okay?

Patton suddenly remembered one thing that might be making it harder for him to balance himself.  “I can take my bag back now,” he said, smiling sheepishly at the fact that he’d forgotten Logan had it.

“...About that.”  Logan slowed so that he was beside them.  “I apologize, Patton, but it appears to have changed upon entering the Imagination, along with its contents.”  He opened the bag, which was now a black leather satchel with a silver clasp, and the other two saw that it was crammed full of old books, and papers, and glass jars containing things none of them could identify.  “This was not a conscious decision on my part, although I can’t deny it seems much more useful than what you originally packed.”

“I guess it’s yours now,” Patton said, obviously disappointed.  “Oh well… I bet you’ll be able to do something cool with all that stuff, so maybe it’s a good thing!”  Still, he wished his snacks weren’t gone.

“Possibly,” Logan agreed.  “I’m planning to spend some time with these books when we reach that town Roman mentioned.”

Virgil didn’t pay much attention to the conversation, content with letting them talk while he looked around.  Contrary to Roman’s aborted speech, there was no danger to be seen here. The woods were peaceful- not quiet, which would have been weird, but filled with the rustling of leaves and the chirping of birds.  Sunlight filtered through the trees and soaked into his dark clothing, relaxing him. Being who he was, though, he still found things to worry about.

“You’re gonna fall, you know,” he told Logan, who was closing the clasp of his bag and not looking where he was going.  “Just take them off.”

“Unlikely,” Logan responded.  Virgil gave him a doubtful look.  “It’s just a matter of adjusting to the difference in height.  Speaking of which, were you always this, uh… small?” To illustrate, he put his hand just above Patton’s head and carefully moved it over.  It missed Virgil by a good four inches. The latter flushed and hunched his shoulders, which didn’t help the whole height issue.

Patton nodded- walking next to him, he’d already noticed.  “I was going to say something, but I didn’t want to bring it up ‘cause I know he gets embarrassed, but it’s too late now so  _ ohmygosh Virgil you’re so tiny and cute ahhhhh!” _  He tried to squish Virgil’s face and got pushed away.

“Leave me  _ alone, _ it wasn’t on purpose,” Virgil groaned, covering his face with his hands.

“Actually, now that I think about it…”  Logan looked down at himself, then unstrapped his shoes and stood beside the two of them on ground level.  He was still clearly taller than Patton, and a full head above Virgil. “I didn’t intend to change anything either, but my height must have increased.”

“Great, then you don’t need the platform sandals.”  Virgil tried to grab the items in question, but Logan saw him coming.

“Yes, I do, my boots could be damaged without them, and they’re  _ pattens.” _

“What?”  Patton looked up from his appreciation of a flower.

“Not you.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t care what you call them,  _ you’re _ going to be damaged if you  _ do _ wear them.”

Logan strapped the objects of discussion back onto his shoes and started walking again to demonstrate that he could.  “See? They barely affect my movement at all.”

“Let’s keep going,” Patton said a little too brightly.  They nodded and shot each other apologetic looks, feeling bad for arguing over something so trivial.

Virgil let the conversation end there.  If Logan wanted to wear the stupid things so bad, he might as well let him.  Unfortunately, his mind was less willing to let go of a idea once it latched on.  He hung back a bit and half-listened as Patton rambled to Logan about the flowers he’d collected and Logan rambled back about what real-life flora they most closely resembled.  With the half that wasn’t listening, he tried to remember what exactly Logan had done when he’d put the pattens back on. Had he fully secured the straps? Were they tight enough?  What if they came loose? They  _ seemed _ fine, but Virgil did not know much about 14th-century footwear, so he couldn’t really know for sure, could he?

They’d been walking for a while now.  Patton had made himself a flower crown and was now working on two more for the others.  Nothing had gone wrong yet, but Virgil’s mind told him that only meant it was bound to happen soon.  Vaguely, he knew he probably should have said something a few minutes ago instead of keeping it to himself until his thoughts ran away with him, but it was too late now.  Logan was going to get hurt, he was sure of it, and it would be partly his fault for not arguing harder. Even if everything  _ was _ properly secured, he would trip over something he didn’t see on the ground.  He squeezed his eyes shut and gave his head a quick shake in an attempt to snap himself out of that train of thought, pushing away the images his brain tried to give him of worst-case scenarios.  His eyes shot open again when he heard the  _ real _ Logan’s sudden shout of pain.

Virgil rushed to where he was now sprawled on the ground a few feet away, expecting the worst- something broken, maybe.  Patton was already kneeling next to him, asking if he was okay. Logan assured them he was mostly unharmed, gathering himself into a sitting position and examining a long cut on his right arm from a sharp rock.  Virgil exhaled slowly, relieved. Then his fear, with nowhere to go, turned to anger.

“I  _ told _ you!  I told you this would happen and you wouldn’t listen to me because you think you’re  _ always right!” _  His voice wavered, and Patton knew he was only yelling because Logan had scared him.  He saw Logan about to make a retort and put a hand on his shoulder to stop him.

Logan looked at Patton’s face and relented.  “You… I’ll admit it, Virge, you were right this time.  I thought it wouldn’t be a problem and I was… wrong. But I’m not badly hurt and I’ll take your concerns more seriously next time.”  He gave a slight reassuring smile, and Virgil relaxed a bit. “Could you see if there are any bandages in here for me? It’s not serious, but I still shouldn't leave this exposed.”  He could have looked for them himself, but he was busy unstrapping the pattens from his shoes, and in any case Virgil looked like he needed to feel useful.

“Hm… nerd stuff, weird powders, more nerd stuff… oh, here, there’s like a first aid kit wrapped up in cloth.”  There were more things in Logan’s bag than it looked like it should fit, but Virgil chose not to call it out on that.  He unwrapped the cloth and started sorting through the supplies.

Meanwhile, Patton was fussing over Logan’s arm despite his protests.  “Aw, you poor thing, does it hurt?”

“Well, yes, somewhat, but I really don’t think this is necessary, it’s only--”

He cut himself off in shock.  Virgil looked up and stopped as well.  As soon as Patton touched the cut, a soft sky-blue glow emanated from both his hand and Logan’s arm, and the injury closed up like it had never existed.  He gasped. There were a few seconds of stunned silence.

“I suppose we don’t need to waste our supplies on my arm now,” Logan said distantly.  It was the only coherent thing he could think of. He was at least doing better than Virgil, who only managed, “Whoa.”

Patton stared at his own hands, eyes wide.  “I have  _ magic powers.” _

They couldn’t sit there all day being surprised, of course.  The sun was getting low in the sky already. Logan helped Virgil wrap the first aid kit back up and tucked it back into his bag, by which time Patton had collected himself enough to get up and follow them.  If he was quieter than usual, well, it had been a long day and a lot of walking, he was probably tired. And if he pulled his cloak around himself and kept his right arm out of sight, well… maybe he was cold.  There was a cool breeze coming in, bringing a hint of rain. With luck, they would reach the town before dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter will have less exposition/talking and more Things Happening, I promise! (and I know describing what people are wearing for several paragraphs is generally frowned upon, but consider this: I didn't spend three hours researching historical clothing to not infodump about it through Logan ok)
> 
> If you're wondering about the height changes: Virgil is 5'4, Logan is 6'0, and Patton is actually 5'8 but since he's in the middle and Roman isn't there to compare to (he's still their normal height, which I believe is 5'10) no one noticed a change. (was there any real reason to do all this? no. does it make everything more fun to picture as i write? absolutely. heck yeah height differences)


	3. In which Patton resolves a moral dilemma

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: mention of that injury from last chapter, but nothing new

They reached the inn just before sundown and in the middle of a rainstorm.  There weren’t many people out and about in town, given said circumstances, but it seemed like a very nice place: cobblestone streets, wooden signs advertising your basic required businesses, houses with flowers in the windows.  The inn was the most prominent building on its street at three stories high. It was the only such establishment in Deercross, and as such was called simply the Deercross Inn.

The proprietor of the Deercross Inn was a young woman with dark hair, who was reading something behind the counter and looked up when they entered.  “Welcome, travelers! Are you interested in a room?”

“Yes, actually,” Logan said, at the same time as Patton exclaimed, “That sounds great!  Oh, do you have one with a balcony?” He seemed like himself again now that there were new things to look at and people to talk to.  Virgil was still by the door, trying unsuccessfully to get water out of his hair and clothes.

She smiled, amused.  “Nothing as fancy as that, I’m afraid, but you can open the window if you like.  Now, I can get you a room with two beds, or if you aren’t opposed to sharing--”

“Two?” Logan interrupted.  “There are three of us.”

Patton looked over his shoulder and waved.  “Virge, c’mon, you can dry off when we have a room.”  Virgil joined them at the front desk, still looking disgruntled.

“Oh, is… he with you?”  Her eyes flickered over him suspiciously, but he didn’t appear to be doing anything actually wrong, and she was a professional.  Even if he did look stereotypically villainous.

Patton put his hands on his hips.  “He’s our best friend, and if you--”

“Yes, we’re all together, just give us the price, please,” Logan cut in before Patton could get them kicked out for threatening to fight the innkeeper.

“...Right.”  She told him, but he didn’t quite catch it.  Also, he wasn’t entirely certain he had any money.  That was not ideal. He started to open his satchel, but stopped at the sound of coins hitting the desk.  He turned.

Virgil had just produced a rainbow of brightly-colored currency out of one of his pockets.  He looked almost as shocked as everyone else. “Yeah, I have no idea what any of this is worth.  I’m also not surprised this is what the coins here look like. So like, how much actually… is this?” He withdrew into his uncomfortably damp hood, having talked quite enough to a stranger who didn’t seem to like him.

“Um… Let me just count it out for you.”  She started sorting out the correct change from the pile.  “I take it you folks aren’t from around here?”

“You could say that,” Logan agreed with a small smile.  To his annoyance, Patton wasn’t content to leave her with an air of mystery.

“We’re heroes!  We’re on an adventure to find our friend!”  He looked around, and grinned in that specific way Logan had come to dread.  “But right now it’s more of just an… at-an-inn-ture.”

“...I should have taken the opportunity to lose you in the woods.”

Patton just laughed in response.  He knew by now that complaining about his jokes was Logan’s way of enjoying them.

The innkeeper smiled, a little confused, and finished counting.  She pushed the rest of Virgil’s pile back toward him, and he scooped it into his pockets.  He  _ might _ remember what she’d told him about the coins.  Probably not. It was poorly defined, like maybe the person who came up with the monetary system just couldn’t be bothered to flesh it out.  She handed him a key. “Sorry I don’t have more than one. The number is right there, 302, just go up these stairs to my left.” He nodded awkwardly and went.  She had never quite managed to hide her wariness of him. To be fair, he didn’t trust her either, but he didn’t trust basically anyone.

“Thank you!” Patton called back to her as Logan pulled him toward the stairs, impatient to dry off properly.  She gave him a thumbs-up.

Their room, as its number suggested, was on the third floor.  It had three individual beds, which seemed weird for an inn until they remembered where they were.  There was also a desk in one corner and a large window facing the front of the building. Patton wrestled the window open and stuck his head out to test the rain.  Yup, it was still raining. Maybe he didn’t need to open the window to know that, but it was too late now. Virgil said something about getting water on the floor, so he closed it again, even though they were still all wet and that was happening anyway and so he didn’t think it was a good reason not to enjoy some fresh air.  Logan pointed out that they had been walking outdoors all day. Patton didn’t see what  _ that _ had to do with  _ anything. _

“I don’t know about you guys but I am  _ done _ with today, I’m going to sleep,” Virgil announced.  He struggled out of his robes, which was a bit of a process, and flopped onto the bed nearest the door with his boots still on.

Logan blinked.  “Were you just wearing your normal clothes underneath the whole time?”

“Maybe.”  He shrugged without opening his eyes.  Logan just shook his head, both at that and the fact that he apparently planned to leave his clothes in a pile on the floor.

Patton claimed the window side, kicking his shoes off and getting under the blankets with his cloak still wrapped around him.  “It’s only wet on the outside,” he claimed when Logan looked at him strangely. He wasn’t sure that made sense, but let it go. Patton did many things that did not make sense.

“Goodnight you two, sleep well, I love you!”

“Good night, Patton.  Your presence is- not unenjoyable.”

Virgil just mumbled something unintelligible.  Close enough.

The light was put out.  Patton waited until Logan had stopped moving around organizing things and seemed to be asleep before struggling out of his cloak, which was not, in fact, completely dry on the inside.  He left it in a ball under the blankets so he wouldn’t wake someone up walking across the room to hang it up, and set his glasses on the windowsill.

He curled up on his side and ran a finger lightly over his arm, brushing a cut identical to the one Logan had had.  To be fair to himself, it wasn’t as if he had  _ known _ this would happen.  The magic-  _ he did magic earlier, what the heck- _ was just sort of… pulled out of him, his only thought had been that he wanted to help.  Still, he felt icky, and not just because of his damp clothes and the less-than-ideal beds here.  

He… there wasn’t any nice way to put it, he was lying to his family, and if he said he would tell them tomorrow he’d be lying to  _ himself. _  It was just… he couldn’t tell them, could he?  They could be kind of overprotective sometimes- especially Virgil, it went without saying- and if they knew what he’d actually done, they would never let him do it again.  Worse, they’d probably be upset that he did it in the first place, and Logan might feel guilty, and… no, he couldn’t tell them. It felt like one of those tricky moral dilemmas, where there might not really be a right answer, but… keeping a friend from getting hurt was one of those times where lying  _ was _ okay, right?  And in a very literal sense, this way he was only hurting himself, and that was better than hurting them any day.

That settled it.  He was going to stop worrying now.  Shaking his head to disrupt the train of thought he was on, he directed his mind to lighter thoughts- all the things they’d seen today, the adventures they were going to have tomorrow- and fell asleep smiling slightly, hugging the drier part of his cloak.

Virgil was not expecting to be able to sleep, not that that made it any less annoying that he couldn’t.  One, he was in an unfamiliar place. Two, there were other people in the room who, three, he was supposed to be keeping out of trouble, and so far his track record wasn’t great.  Four, his headphones seemed to have fused into his hood when he changed outfits, and he wasn’t getting them back until the adventure was over. None of that added up to relaxation.  He must at least have gotten  _ some  _ sleep, though, because the next thing he knew, some little noise or another was waking him up.

It was earlier than he’d ever willingly been conscious before, but he wasn’t the first one awake.  That was Logan, who was lighting a candle on the desk in nothing but his breeches. Virgil tossed a pillow at him blindly and he startled, almost burning his fingers.  Oops.

“Why are you not wearing clothes…”  Virgil rubbed a hand over his eyes and hoped his face wasn’t red.  It was too early in the morning for finishing sentences.

“I was hardly going to sleep in them, and as long as I was the only one awake it wasn’t a problem,” he said like it was the most reasonable thing in the world.  “Why does it even bother you? We have the same body. Or, almost the same.”

“Yeah, and I don’t even wanna look at  _ my _ version more than necessary.  At least put a shirt on.”

Logan gave in and took his clothes from the end of the bed where he’d laid them out before sleeping.  “Happy?”

“Well, no, that was only  _ one _ of my many problems, but- wait, where’s my-?”  His own things weren’t where he had left them. Which, to be fair, had been in a pile on the floor, but still.

Logan pointed.  The robes were hung up by the door.  “Exposing more of the fabric to the air helps it dry faster.”

“Oh.”  So that was what he’d been doing when Virgil had wanted to yell at him to stop making noise and go to bed already.  “...Thanks, I guess.” He pulled them on with a contented sigh. Logan simply nodded in response.

“So, uh, what’re you reading?”  He was standing behind Logan now, looking over his shoulder at the thick book open on the desk.

“One of the books that appeared in this bag.  It appears to be a sort of beginner’s guide to alchemy.  Normally, of course, such a thing would be useless to… well, anyone ever… but I believe I’m being offered a compromise here.”

“Fantasy science?”

“...Sure.  If you must.  Currently I am taking notes on the properties and uses of the various materials I was also provided with.”  He tilted the leather-bound notebook in his lap toward Virgil. In the time they’d been talking, he had already filled half a page.

“Mm.”  Virgil pulled another chair up next to him and suppressed a yawn.  It was still  _ very _ early in the morning.  He leaned against the desk, propping his head up, and said, “Tell me about it?”

An hour or two later, the sun finally came through the window and woke Patton.  He stretched under the blankets and debated staying there. It was so warm and cozy, but… there were so many things he wanted to do today, and he couldn’t exactly do any of them in bed!  He sat up, pulled his cloak around his shoulders and fumbled for his glasses. He was about to call out a “good morning” to the others, until he saw them and covered his mouth to contain a squeal.

Half the desk was taken up by Logan’s book as he glanced between that and the notes he was scribbling down.  It was a mystery how he ever read his own handwriting. The other half, though, was taken up by Virgil, his face buried in his folded arms.  Logan’s materials were stacked up on his side as if he'd cleared space, and he seemed to be making an effort to work quietly, the scratching of his pen the only sound in the room.  Virgil shifted in his sleep and Logan paused in mid-sentence to look over at him, wearing one of the softest expressions Patton had ever seen on him. It was a very sweet moment, which was promptly interrupted by a flash and the sound of a camera shutter.

“Dang it, sorry!”  Patton fumbled with the volume on his phone, while Logan jumped and turned to glare at him for sneaking up behind them.  “I always forget to turn that off!”

Virgil was sitting up now, shoving his bangs out of his face and trying to figure out what was going on.  His eyes widened when he saw Patton’s phone. “Did you just-- You better delete that!”

“No, it’s a good picture!  You were so  _ cute, _ I had to!”  He darted out of reach and stuffed his phone back into his pocket, wrapping himself up in his cloak so no one could get to it.  “Please?”

Virgil sighed.  It was  _ really hard _ to be mad at Patton for more than five seconds at a time, especially when he just woke up.  “Fine, whatever, just… don’t show it to anybody.”

Patton nodded happily and returned to drape himself over the back of Logan’s chair, resting his chin on his head.   _ “So, _ what are we doing today?  Got any Lo-plans?” He felt so much  _ lighter, _ now that he was sure he was making the right decision, and couldn’t wait to get out and start the day.

“ _ Please _ stop,” Logan said, although he couldn’t possibly mean it.  “Personally, I was planning to spend the rest of the day on research to improve my understanding of this realm.”  There were a few more books stacked on the desk in addition to the one already open. “We have this room until midday tomorrow, so I see no reason to leave it.”

“Oh.  Okay.”  Patton’s enthusiasm dimmed at the knowledge that he probably wouldn’t get two sentences in a row out of Logan as long as he was absorbed in his books, and what he did get would be along the lines of “go away and let me concentrate.”

Virgil nudged his shoulder.  “You still got me to hang out with, at least.”

Patton’s eyes lit up again, and he grabbed Virgil’s hand.  “We should go shopping! I bet you can buy stuff here that doesn’t even  _ exist  _ anywhere else!"

“Uh…”  That wasn’t quite  _ his _ idea of a good time, but Patton seemed really excited about it, and if Virgil said no he’d either be sad or try to go by himself, and leaving Patton to wander a strange town alone was probably a  _ more _ stressful concept than being surrounded by people and talking to cashiers.  “Sure.”

Patton grinned and pulled him out the door.  “Bye Logan, have fun with your books, don’t forget to eat and stuff!”  Logan hummed in response, and Virgil just braced himself for the day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this is kinda short but I wanted to get a chapter out today lol
> 
> Next chapter, shopping trip!


	4. In which Virgil and large crowds of people do not get along

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Patton and Virgil explore the town of Deercross. It goes mostly as planned, until it doesn't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: uhh sensory overload (described based on my own experience oops) and it gets sort of generally intense at the end... nothing else sticks out to me but tell me if im wrong
> 
> you know what these are gonna start going in the end notes next chapter i just decided

Patton pulled Virgil outside and into a bright, sunny morning.  They had to take a minute to adjust after the low lighting of the inn.  Well, Virgil did, at least- Patton just bounced on his toes and looked around, eyes constantly darting from one thing to another as he waited for Virgil to stop shading his eyes with his free hand and glaring through it in the general direction of the sun.  Patton wanted to see  _ everything, _ so he didn’t particularly mind starting with the café that Virgil, as soon as he could see again, announced that they were going into  _ right now, _ because he was going to murder someone if he didn’t get some caffeine in his system.  That statement did not help with the weird looks he felt like he was getting, but hey, if people were scared of him they at least might not question his appearance out loud.

Virgil wanted to grab them a table and let Patton handle the talking alone, but they were both at the counter before he could actually say so.  He settled for definitely-not-hiding behind his more outgoing friend and letting him order first. If only he would  _ make a freakin’ decision. _

“Virgil Virgil Virgil look!”

“I’m looking.  It’s basically just the Starbucks menu, are you gonna pick something or not?”

“No no, look  _ here!” _  He pointed to a section at the bottom that Virgil hadn’t previously noticed.  “They have  _ magic drinks! _  Should I get one?  I’m gonna get one.”

“If you want.  They look kinda gross, but I won’t stop you.”  Virgil thought it was too early in the morning for this much enthusiasm, or  _ any, _ actually, but he did live with both Patton and Roman on a day-to-day basis, so it was at least a  _ familiar _ sort of headache.  And, he would admit, a somewhat endearing one.

“Okay, okay, so-” Patton stood on his toes and leaned his hands on the counter as if the extra inch of height would let him read the signs on the wall better.  “I want that one, y’know, the sparkly thing with all the colors?”

“Gotcha,” the barista responded, not bothering to correct him on what it was called.  Life was too short to care about the names of imaginary coffees. “That’s a very popular one.  We get the ingredients from the Fae Forest, you know,” he said conversationally as he made the drink.  It was, indeed, very colorful and sparkly. It was also glowing.

“Really?  What’s that?”

The barista looked surprised, which Patton should have considered an accomplishment.  “Are you serious? The road out of town runs right by the edge of the forest, how have you not seen it?”

Patton shrugged.  “We came from the other direction.”

“Oh.”  He knew there was no road in the other direction, but again, life was too short to care.  “Well, if you really don’t know, it’s a huge forest full of magical creatures. I’ve heard about a lot of weird stuff happening in there, especially at night.  Seen some of it, too.” He slid Patton’s magical coffee across the counter to him. “Nothing  _ too _ dangerous, but if you decide to give it a look I’d recommend staying on the path.  Now, what do  _ you _ want, or are you just gonna stand there looking shady?”

Virgil was caught off-guard too severely to register that he should be offended.  “Oh, uh- just a black coffee.” He couldn’t stand the taste of black coffee, which was exactly why he drank it to wake up.

“Boring.”

Virgil made a face.  “Your  _ mom _ is boring.”

_ “Virgil,” _ Patton chided.  The barista waited until he was distracted by the menu again to turn and stick his tongue out in response.

Something here seemed weird to Virgil, but then again, something always seemed weird to Virgil.  He brushed it off and dug out a handful of coins. “Tell me which of these to give you, ‘cause somebody explained it yesterday and yet I still have no idea.”

“...Um.”  The barista gave the coins a “yikes” sort of look and awkwardly touched his face in a way reminiscent of what Logan did when he forgot he didn’t have his glasses on.  “You know what, on the house this time,” he said quickly, pushing Virgil’s hand away.

“Oh, thank you so much!”  Patton scooped up his drink with a bright smile.  Virgil was going to ask some more questions, like  _ do you actually know how this money works any more than I do _ and  _ why does a modern coffeeshop even exist in this fantasy world, _ but they were out the door again before he could do more than shoot the guy a suspicious look.

“Patton, for- how am I supposed to drink this if you won’t let me stand still for two seconds?”

“Oh!  Sorry.”  Patton slowed, and Virgil took a long sip of his terrible gross drink, trying not to make a face.  “Forgot yours doesn’t have a straw. Honestly, I know you don’t even like that, do you want some of mine?”

Virgil eyed it suspiciously and shook his head.  “It looks radioactive, I’m not putting that in my body.  I’m just gonna…” He downed as much of his coffee as he could at once, grimaced, and threw the rest away.  “Yeah, I think I’m awake now. Where are we going?”

Where they were going, evidently, was into every shop on the street.  They ended up with pastries for breakfast, a few cute little trinkets each on Patton’s insistence, and some extra supplies they might eventually need on Virgil’s.  And of course, Patton had to talk to  _ everyone. _  It was admittedly helpful- they knew now that they would, as they’d suspected, need to go through the mysterious forest to get to Roman- but  _ jeez, _ all the  _ talking, _ Virgil was about ready to hide in a dark room for the rest of his  _ life. _  One person wouldn’t let him in because he looked suspicious or whatever, which, honestly, he was surprised it only happened  _ once. _  Between all that and the fact that he couldn’t seem to avoid constantly bumping into people on the busier streets even though Patton was doing just fine, and they seemed to think he was doing it on  _ purpose, _ he was getting close to his limit.

But then they went around a corner and found the market.  It was an entire double-wide street lined with vendor’s carts of all kinds- bustling with people, of course.  Patton’s eyes lit up immediately, while Virgil’s instinct was to cringe.

“Okay so I know you’re tired, so if you don’t wanna do this that’s okay, you can wait here and I’ll just go by myself and--”

“Nope.”  Virgil pushed himself off the wall he was leaning on.  There was no possible future where he watched Patton disappear into that mess and didn’t panic.  “I’ll come, just- this has to be the last thing we do, okay?” He was pretty sure he could make it through one last crowded area as long as he knew they were going back for a nap immediately afterward.

“Okay!”  Patton grinned, clearly glad he’d decided to go along, and tugged him into the chaos of the market.

Virgil quickly realized he’d made a mistake.  Several mistakes, actually. He should not have gotten Patton a coffee earlier, because his best friend was not a man who needed any more energy than he already had.  He should not have gotten  _ himself _ a coffee earlier, because the caffeine only ever made him more jittery and nervous and he knew this and yet he always ended up drinking it anyway.  And he absolutely should not have agreed to come and check out the market.

He had never- no, nobody on  _ earth _ had ever had this bad of a headache before, probably.  There were so many people yelling so many different things over each other, and basically every kind of loud noise in existence, and the sun was  _ really bright _ still, and if he thought the regular streets were hard to navigate, well, he  _ probably should have taken that as a sign _ not to go into an  _ even busier one. _  With all the widely varied food vendors, even his sense of  _ smell _ was being assaulted.  If  _ one _ more person brushed up against him he was gonna  _ snap. _  Yeah, no, he needed to get out of here right now, it was stupid that he’d ever assumed he would be good for it.

Patton took the first tug on his hand as just Virgil having trouble navigating the crowd again, and slowed down a little to make it easier for him to keep up.  Normally he would look back to check on him, but if he did that now he’d run right into somebody for sure! The next one, though, was hard enough to make him stop and turn around, letting the flow of people part on either side of him.  Virgil wasn’t quite looking  _ at _ him so much as just to the left of his head.  He seemed really tense. The hand that wasn’t in Patton’s was clenched in his pocket, the hood of his jacket was up, and his jaw was tight.

“Virgil?  You, uh, you okay, kiddo?”

Virgil shook his head and jerked his hand away so he could cross his arms, tapping his fingers on his elbow in agitation.  “This is- too much,” he managed. Patton strained to hear him over the noise of the market. “Just- loud and bright and-  _ people,” _ he explained with a slightly disgusted tone.

“If you don’t wanna be here anymore we can leave,” Patton assured him.  He went to squeeze Virgil’s shoulder before remembering that would probably just make things worse right now.  “Just keep close behind me if you can’t deal with my hand, okay? Wouldn’t want either of us getting lost!”

Virgil nodded impatiently, taking a small step toward him so as to demonstrate that he would stay close.  Patton made another aborted move to touch him and grabbed his own wrist to make himself stop doing that. Personal space hadn’t really been in his vocabulary before he started spending more time with Virgil, okay, this was actually  _ progress. _  He offered a sympathetic look instead, then turned and started forging a path through the chaos in the direction of the nearest side street, keeping up a constant stream of “sorry!” and “excuse me!” under his breath.

People were annoyed with Patton for pushing through against the flow of traffic, but he was at least apologizing, and anyway, he had the kind of face that made everyone who saw him think he was probably fundamentally incapable of ill intent.  Virgil, following in his wake and knocking people even  _ further _ off balance, had none of that going for him.  He was just trying to make it to a quieter street without shutting down entirely, he did  _ not _ have the mental energy to make sure no one was upset with him for briefly inconveniencing them.  If he was lucky, no one would care enough to make a scene. Unfortunately for  _ everyone _ involved, luck was not on his side.

Just as he was wondering if people were going to get mad at him, and debating the pros and cons of trying to get actual human words to come out of his mouth to keep that from happening, he knocked shoulders fairly hard with some guy trying to buy tomatoes.  The guy dropped everything he was holding and swore, turning to glare at the inconsiderate moron who jolted him. Virgil didn’t look remorseful enough to keep him from getting pissed, apparently. “Watch it, jerkface,” tomato guy snapped, and gave him a shove in retaliation before starting to gather his fallen produce.

Virgil wasn’t  _ caught off guard _ exactly, but he didn’t have much room to move, so the push sent him stumbling to the side and almost knocking over a few  _ more _ people.  “Sorry,” he forced out, even though that time was not his fault.  He wasn’t sure anyone heard him either way. He got his footing back and looked around wildly.  “Patton? Where’d you-?  _ Patto _ **_n, PATTON!”_ **

Oh, no, no,  _ no _ .  Not the demonic voice thing, not  _ now. _  Everyone was staring at him.  The only silver lining was that one, people were at least giving him some space now, and two, Patton  _ definitely _ heard that if he hadn’t very recently gone deaf.  He slapped a hand over his mouth- voluntarily, for once- hoping to mitigate the damage.  Everyone around was still watching him, just  _ watching, _ and further back in the crowd there were whispers he couldn’t make out, but knew were about him.  He didn’t dare speak again, even to defend himself. He was frozen in place by the thought that any move he made could be taken as a threat and get him killed.  He could have cried from relief when he heard a familiar voice and caught a glimpse of blue moving his way.

“Excuse me, coming through, sorry, it’s- look I really am sorry for pushing okay but this is a little more important!   _ Virgil! _  Virge, I’m so sorry I lost you, are you--”  Patton shouldered past the circle of onlookers and gasped.

His soft, but stressed shadowling was covered in actual  _ shadows. _  Scraps of darkness were flitting frantically around Virgil, concentrated at his feet and around his hands and arms.  He didn’t seem to notice them. A few darted briefly in Patton’s direction before returning to the swarm, and he tried not to flinch.  He took a cautious step forward, and saw people at the edge of his vision looking at him like he’d lost his mind.

“Virge, sweetie, I need you to stay calm…”  He caught a panicked version of that twist Virgil’s mouth did when he was amused.  “Oh, you know what I mean. Just, focus on me, okay, ignore everything else, that’s it…”  Slowly, he advanced another step, holding his hands up in front of him like he was trying to calm a spooked horse.  It even seemed to be working. Virgil’s posture was starting to open up ever so slightly. He felt good about the odds of no one getting hurt here, as long as nothing else went… 

“Oi!  You, in the black, don’t move!  Don’t you know dark magic is forbidden in Deercross?!”

...wrong.  Both their heads snapped toward the sound of town guards approaching with swords drawn and a lot of bluster.  Patton couldn’t help feeling a pang of empathy for them- they must not get much trouble around here, they were probably scared and trying to hide it.  He was much more worried, though, about Virgil, who was desperately looking for an escape route, shadows swirling faster than ever. There were no gaps in the crowd, though, not even for someone his size, he was  _ trapped, _ and they were drawing closer as the desire to watch what happened next overpowered their fear.  The jerky movements and darting eyes that should have clearly showed he was as scared as they were, if not more so, only fueled the people’s mutters, now loud enough for Patton to make out.

_ Dark magic. _

_ Some sort of villain, no doubt. _

_ Shouldn’t let that sort into town. _

_ Evil. _

Patton ran to try and intercept the three guards- this didn’t have to turn bad, he could still salvage the situation.  “Wait, please!” he shouted over the noise. The guards didn’t seem to hear him, so he raised his voice a little more. “Let me explain, he wasn’t trying to hurt anybody, he would never, this is all a, a big misunderstanding--”  They didn’t even acknowledge him, not even when he was right next to them. He grabbed one’s arm only to be shaken off. Desperately, he ducked under it and stood between them and Virgil, arms spread. “Would you just  _ listen!” _ he screamed, tears pricking his eyes.  “He’s not a  _ villain, _ he’s my  _ friend!” _

“Stand aside,” one of the guards said to him, not unkindly.  “I don’t know how this wizard managed to gain your trust, but I can tell you he is not truly your friend.  Now, please, step aside, we don’t need innocents getting hurt.”

“No! I won’t--”

**“Do it, Patton,”** Virgil ground out.  He couldn’t let  _ Patton _ get hurt trying to protect  _ him, _ that would be a whole new level of sucking at his job.  Patton had no intention of obeying, yet found himself doing so anyway.  That voice was  _ scary, _ alright?  Wait, no, he wasn’t  _ scared of Virgil, _ that was ridiculous.  Compelling, that was the word.  His brain didn’t catch up with his body until he was standing at the edge of the circle.

He spun around and let out an involuntary sharp cry.  Virgil was hunched in on himself, practically at the center of a dark vortex, his eyes wild and a hand pressed to his mouth.  The guards were advancing on him cautiously, they still had swords out,  _ they were going to hurt him oh god- _

Several things happened at once.

Patton yelled incoherently and threw himself, yet again, at the nearest guard.  The  _ furthest _ guard from him made a grab for Virgil.  Last and most importantly, there was a loud crackle of electricity.  Everyone standing nearby was thrown forcefully back as a sphere six feet in diameter, made of something resembling black lightning, expanded out from Virgil in a fraction of a second.

Patton narrowly avoided cracking his head on the ground when he fell.  “Oh,  _ shoot,” _ he said with feeling.  He pushed himself to his feet and ran up to the sphere, ignoring everything else.  “Virgil!” He tried to bang on the forcefield with his palm, but it shocked him and he pulled back with a yelp.  “Are you- can you hear me in there, kiddo? Virge?” An edge of panic was creeping into his voice. “What- what did you  _ do? _  What is this?”

“Funny,” said a voice behind him, “I was going to ask  _ you _ that question.”  He turned around. Only one guard was standing, the other two having not yet recovered from the blast.  That one, though, was plenty to worry about, because he had his sword pointed shakily at Patton’s chest.

Patton backed up until a warning static-like tingle told him he was about to bump into the sphere.  “Okay, this, uh, this isn’t as bad as it might look,” he insisted, holding his hands up placatingly.  “I- I can explain!”

The guard got his nerves under control and brought the sword up until the tip was no more than a few inches from Patton’s throat, holding it steady.  “I certainly hope you can.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cliffhanger endings? in MY fun little shopping montage chapter? it's more likely than you think
> 
> why do i only ever post updates at like two in the morning this needs to stop


	5. In which things go better than they could have, if not by much

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings are in the endnotes now cause i was starting to worry about spoiling things with them in the future
> 
> i was gonna have a bit with roman in this chapter but then it was already over 2000 words and i figured it would be easier to just give him the whole next chapter to himself so heres the resolution of last chapter's situation

Virgil may have blacked out for a couple seconds.  One moment he was surrounded and panicking, and the next, he was sitting on the ground somewhere dark, cool, and quiet.  He was already calming down, almost like- wait, it probably  _ was _ magic.  He stood and straightened his robes, examining his surroundings.  There was just enough light to make out the smooth, curving walls that surrounded him.  He didn’t feel trapped, strangely enough; he had the feeling he could leave at any time, although he had no idea how he knew that.

He could still hear noise outside.  He wasn’t in some kind of pocket dimension or anything, then.  There were voices, but too muffled for him to know what they were saying.  He was probably going to have to leave whatever this was and deal with what had happened at some point, but… he didn’t really want to.  Maybe he could just hang out in here a bit longer. Wait until he had a clear idea of  _ how _ he was going to deal with it, at least.

He jumped.  Something had just touched the outside of his little bubble for a second, and he felt it, somehow.  He walked cautiously up to the side it had come from. The voices outside were louder now, closer. He heard someone he didn’t recognize, and then… Patton?  Yeah, that was him. He wished he could make out what was going on, but he was only getting tone, not actual words.

What he  _ did _ know was that Patton was still talking, and his voice was rising in both pitch and volume, and he was starting to stumble over words, and Virgil was getting worried.  He pressed his hand against the wall and wondered how to get rid of it. He couldn’t leave Patton alone out there with the town guards, he was going to get hurt for sure if he wasn’t already, there was no doubt in his mind--

Another feeling that something had bumped the outside of the bubble, a cry of pain, and before Virgil could think the bubble was gone and he was moving.  There was Patton and a guard and Virgil was grabbing Patton’s arm, jerking him out of reach just in time, whirling around and yelling  **_“MOVE”_ ** and the crowd defied the laws of physics to part for him.  He didn’t slow down or even look up until they were three streets away, and even then only because he tripped over a loose cobblestone and crashed onto his hands and knees, barely managing to avoid bringing Patton with him.  He pushed himself up and finally looked at something other than the next place to run.

They were in a narrow alley.  Patton was leaning on the wall of a building, winded.  “Looks like your old dad is a little out of shape,” he laughed between breaths.

“We’re the same age, you're not actually my dad,” Virgil reminded him. “Sorry about… that.”  He jerked his head in the general direction of the market.

“Oh, don’t say that, it wasn’t--”

“We can talk about it later,” Virgil cut in, hearing the shouts of guards approaching.  They weren’t safe yet. “We have to get back to the inn before they find us. Think you can keep up?”

Patton winced.  “Uh…” He was still out of breath from the  _ first _ bit of running, while Virgil didn’t seem affected at all.  “I’ll do my best!”

His best was not very good.  Virgil had a grip on his wrist to keep him from getting behind, but he was still struggling and nearly falling a lot.  Unsurprisingly, the side in charge of running away from dangerous things was  _ fast _ when he wanted to be.  He tried to slow his pace a little for Patton, but that let their pursuit start to catch up, and they had to  _ lose _ them before they could go back to the inn, not just stay ahead.  Virgil turned a corner and stopped abruptly, and Patton didn’t have time to ask what he was doing before he was lifted off his feet.

“Do  _ not _ mention this to  _ anyone,” _ Virgil said darkly, already running again, somehow faster than Patton was capable of even when he was  _ carrying _ him.   _ “Ever.” _  Patton just laughed nervously and held onto his robes, trying not to fall.

Ten minutes later, Virgil deposited him behind the inn and slid down the wall, breathing hard.  Patton looked at him and got halfway through the word “sorry,” feeling bad for making him have to do all that, but before he could finish Virgil shook his head, as if to shake off fatigue like water, and stood back up.

“No- I mean- ugh, we don’t have  _ time _ for this.  We have to get Logan and leave, now.”  His tone said it wasn’t a suggestion. Patton looked down, nodded and followed him into the inn.

The innkeeper gave them a weird look as they rushed through her lobby, and Patton half-turned and waved awkwardly as he started up the stairs.

Logan was deep in a reference guide to local flora, and nearly threw his pen across the room when the door slammed open.  Virgil was standing there with his leg in the air, having apparently just kicked it open. “LOGAN, HOLY-”

His next word, whatever it would have been, was muffled by Patton’s hand.  “Watch your- hey, don’t  _ lick me!” _  He pulled his hand away and wiped it on his pants.

“Instinctive reaction, not my fault,” Virgil claimed.  “Logan, pack it up, buddy, we gotta go.” He was already kneeling on his bed, sorting his belongings into different pockets.  He’d been about three pounds lighter without all this stuff.

Logan’s brow furrowed as he tore off a scrap of paper to use as a bookmark.  “What? Why? We have this room until tomorrow, do we not?”

Virgil sighed.  “I…”

“There was a little bit of an incident and some people got mad and it wasn’t anyone’s fault,” Patton interrupted.  He knew Virgil too well to let him finish that sentence. He didn’t have much to pack up, so he wandered over to the window.  “Ooh. That doesn’t look  _ good…” _

“What?” Virgil demanded, suddenly next to him.  “What doesn’t-  _ oh. _  We- we have to leave, Logan, right now, seriously…”  There were guards down on the street, methodically knocking on every door, and they would reach the inn soon.  In a town where nothing happens, it doesn’t take much to become law enforcement’s top priority.

Logan looked at the mess in front of him.  In his defense, there had been no reason to expect he would  _ need _ to clean it up quickly.  “This is going to take some time,” he said.  “I think it would be best that you go ahead and then wait for me.  There’s only one road, so you shouldn’t be difficult to find, and it’s not as if  _ I _ have done anything to warrant suspicion, after all.”

Virgil hesitated.  He didn’t want to be separated, but he also didn’t want to be  _ caught. _  And out of all the other sides, Logan was the one he most trusted not to do anything too stupid when left to his own devices.  “Okay, fine, but you better actually catch up as fast as you can and not stick around to read a little more,” he warned.

“I would never.”

Patton giggled.

“I don’t see what is so amusing,” Logan huffed as the other two headed for the door.

“Like Virge said,” Patton reminded him just before leaving, “don’t be too  _ slow-gan!” _  He pulled the door shut before Logan could complain, which somehow diminished his desire to have an irritated reaction at all.  Logan didn’t understand why that was, himself. Surely he should have been equally annoyed whether Patton was around to know about it or not.

The innkeeper had an almost resigned look when Virgil and Patton ran back down the stairs and approached her.  “Let us out the back and forget either of us was here,” Virgil told her, pressing a variety of coins into her hand.  At least  _ some _ of those were probably valuable.  She just nodded, having somewhat expected something like this, and led them to the staff entry.

“Thank you, you have a very nice inn,” Patton told her on his way out.  She just smiled and nodded, then went back to the desk and added them to the list of people who would not be allowed to stay there a second time.

Virgil didn’t relax until they were well out of town.  He kept pulling them around the side of buildings to hide at every little noise.  Patton just followed his lead, because trying to make conversation, or suggest that maybe it would be a better plan to just try not to look so obviously guilty of something, seemed like a bad idea when he was this tense.  Finally, they came to a large rock almost Patton’s height by the side of the road, conveniently right next to a path that led towards the forest, and chose it as a good place to stop and wait for Logan. 

Sitting with his back against the rock, hidden from anyone walking past, Virgil finally released the tension in his shoulders.  Well, some of it. He  _ was _ still literal Anxiety, and there was Logan to worry about.  Which, he realized, he should absolutely not do right now under any circumstances, because all he could actually accomplish would be to get himself believing something bad would happen.  Like when he’d been so sure Patton was going to get hurt back there. Or when he’d just  _ known _ someone would try to start something with him for pushing.  Or when he’d spent the entire time between learning they were going to a town and actually getting there obsessing over what people would think of him when they saw him in this outfit, and then, wow, what do you know, he was universally distrusted.  Somehow, coming to the conclusion that everything was in fact his fault only made him worry  _ more. _

Patton sat facing him, legs crossed, leaning to the side to rest his head against the rock.  He studied Virgil’s face for a moment. “You know that wasn’t your fault, right?”

Virgil sighed, frustrated.  “Yeah, sure, totally, except for how I’m the one who decided to show up in a fantasy world dressed like an evil wizard, and I’m the one who can’t navigate a crowd without making enemies, or control himself enough to not do scary-looking magic by mistake in the middle of the street, and--”

“Yeah, but you weren’t trying to scare people, you were just stressed out and they overreacted,  _ and _ you’re also the one who got us  _ out _ of there,” Patton pointed out, eyebrow raised.  “And the one who found his way back to the inn perfectly after running in circles for fifteen minutes, and didn’t leave me behind when I was slowing us down, and let me drag him around town all day in the first place, which made me very happy.  So you shouldn’t be apologizing, I should be thanking you. It’s not like you  _ made _ any of that happen, it was just… bad luck.”

Virgil looked stunned and doubtful, which was kind of his default when anyone said anything nice about him.  He shouldn’t let Patton keep thinking so well of him when it wasn’t true. He should tell him what he’d figured out, that Virgil and his stupid constant worrying were  _ causing _ their bad luck.  “But I- uh... wait, the, uh, the bubble thing, did that hurt you?”  He couldn’t do it. Not when Patton was looking at him with actual  _ admiration. _  He wasn’t strong enough for that, he had to just… change the subject like a coward.  “Or- anything else?”

“No, no, it- well, it sort of shocked me when I touched it, but it didn’t actually  _ do _ anything, y’know, it just  _ felt _ like it hurt.”

“...Okay.  I don’t actually know, but sure.  Really though, you’re not hurt at  _ all?” _

“I, uh…”  This was unfair, Virgil was looking at him all worried, he couldn’t flat-out lie.  “I… might have a little scratch?” He held up his arm. He didn’t have to say it  _ wasn’t _ from earlier today.

Virgil looked at it and sighed, looking through his pockets for the extra roll of bandages he bought earlier.  “What, were you just not gonna tell me?”

“It didn’t seem serious enough to care about!”

“Not  _ now, _ maybe, but it could get infected or something, we’re gonna be out in nature and stuff!”  He wrapped up most of Patton’s forearm, which he thought was a bit overkill, muttering under his breath about idiots who shouldn’t be trusted with swords.  Patton stayed quiet.

Virgil finished and leaned back against the rock, pulling his knees up to his chest, and winced- why did it hurt to bend them?  He looked down. Oh. He suddenly remembered falling in the street.

_ “Virgil,” _  Patton said.  “You yelled at me over a scratch and yet you weren’t going to tell me  _ you _ scraped up your knees?”  He folded his arms in mock scolding, then moved to heal him.

“Hey, I forgot, a lot was happening,” Virgil defended himself.  He watched Patton’s magic with interest. “Sure would be more convenient if you could just do that to yourself, too.”

Patton laughed a little too brightly, hiding a wince.  He’d realized too late that healing this particular thing while kneeling was a mistake.  “Guess I’ll just have to try not to hurt myself again.”

It wasn’t much longer before Logan arrived, having somehow stuffed all his scattered papers and thick books into his satchel.  He almost dropped it in surprise when Patton jumped out from behind a rock and ambush-hugged him, claiming that he hadn’t seen him  _ all day _ and therefore couldn’t help it.  Stories from the day were traded, some more exciting than others, and new knowledge shared.

By the time they paused at the edge of the Fae Forest, the sun was close to setting, but they couldn’t exactly go back into town for the night.  Virgil told himself firmly that  _ everything would be fine, _ but he didn’t believe it.  Patton marveled at how tall the trees ahead were, not to mention how much more  _ alive _ they seemed than anything he’d seen in the real world.  Logan just pushed his glasses up for the third time in a minute and stared into the brush, suspiciously looking for the  _ weird things _ which supposedly resided therein.

“I suppose all we can do now is… walk in.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Minor injuries, Virgil talks bad about himself
> 
>  
> 
> surprise, you thought that was all coincidences but it was actually foreshadowing, ha
> 
> me: theres no shipping in this  
> also me: ...and then virgil literally bridal-carries patton away from danger
> 
> two chapters in two days who am i


	6. In which Roman has company

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> roman was mad at me for ignoring him so i gave him an entire chapter to make up for it, which is why this one feels a bit short because it was originally combined with the last one
> 
> warnings in endnotes

Roman watched through his full-length mirror as his friends entered the forest.  All the walking wasn’t very exciting, but watching it was better than doing nothing.  He had finally worked out how to zoom in on the stupid thing after tinkering with it (and shouting at it) for most of the day, and _jeez_ was he ever gonna have to have a talk with those three about their clothing choices.  Virgil at least looked the part, although it was the _wrong_ part.  And, okay, yes, Patton was freakin’ adorable, that was a given.  Logan, uh… yeah, he had nothing there.  Even his face- which was, of course, identical to Roman’s own face, and Roman looked good in anything- still couldn’t save that outfit.  Back to the point, though, if they were going through the forest, that meant they were taking the same route he himself had a few days ago.  Which meant… hmm.

He flopped on the bed to think, staring up at the ceiling.  When he traveled that path, he was always presented with challenges- three of them, to be exact.  Adventuring was his way of testing himself, making sure his improvisation skills were kept sharp, as well as his swordsmanship.  His friends probably wouldn’t be fighting much, though, given that they had no weapons and wouldn't know how to use them if they did.  No, they were more likely to face obstacles suited to _their_ individual strengths.

“But what might those be?” he mused aloud.  Not that he didn’t know what their strengths were, but how did, say, Patton’s emotional intelligence and caring nature translate into anything that might pop up in the normal course of a heroic quest?  He tried not to dwell on the fact that he _should_ have known, that it was practically unheard of for him to truly not know what would happen in his own dreamspace.  “I mean, I’ve certainly never heard of anyone defeating a dragon with hugs.”

“Have you ever tried?”  He sat up in surprise at the sound of another voice, light and teasing, yet underlaid with a dangerous sharpness.  The Dragon Witch herself, stepping through the mirror.  He quickly dismissed the images therein and laid a hand on his sword, jumping to his feet.  “It’s been a while, Prince," she said, as if they were old friends and not two people who regularly tried to kill each other.

“Not long enough, witch, and I believe the attempt would only earn me a knife in the back,” he pointed out, eyebrow raised.  She laughed, tossing her intricately braided dark hair over her shoulder.

“You know me too well.  How are you faring, all alone in here?  I know it must be difficult for you, what with the lack of adoring imaginary subjects and all.”

“You’ll be disappointed to hear that I am perfectly fine.”  Actually, he had never been so bored in his life.  Now that the facts of his situation had really settled into the Imagination’s framework, he couldn’t conjure _anything_ fun anymore.  “Enough small talk, what are you planning?  You must have a reason for wanting me out of the way.”  His weapon was drawn now, and they circled each other, Roman holding his sword at the ready, the witch’s hands giving off a warning glimmer of magic.  They both knew better than to attack first, so a wary peace existed for the moment.

“Oh, taking over your kingdom, terrorizing the populace, the usual.  I do wish you’d give me more complicated motives once in a while.” The witch was one of Roman’s earliest creations.  He wasn’t entirely sure when she had become self-aware.  It was a bit worrying, if he was honest; sometimes he wasn’t sure if she was really under his control or just playing along for her own amusement, but no, that was silly.

Roman bristled at the insult to his creativity, clapping a hand over his heart in offended shock.  “You dare presume to tell me how to craft my stories?!   _I_ wish _you_ wouldn’t imprison me in my own architecture, but we can’t always have what we want, can we?”

“Point taken.  But that reminds me, I didn’t just come to indulge your love of antagonistic banter.”  She took a step towards him and he raised his sword defensively.  “Oh, put that down, I’m not here to fight.”

“Maybe _I_ am,” he retorted, and, well, with an opening like _that,_ what was he _supposed_ to do?  He lunged at her with a shout, only to find himself suspended in midair, surrounded by green and gold light.  Stupid magic. His sword floated out of his hand and over to her while he was immobilized.  She finally released him from the spell after catching it and he thudded onto the floor in a very unprincely manner.  He glared at her and stood up, brushing himself off and trying to look at least a _little_ bit dignified.

She responded as if nothing had happened between his last statement and this one.  “No, you’re here to wait for someone to save you from my evil clutches, but since I doubt _that_ will be happening any time soon, right now you’re going to help me with _this.”_  She produced a rolled-up parchment and showed him a vague drawing of a castle.  “I mean, it’s definitely _missing_ something, right?”

He blinked, taken aback and briefly forgetting to be angry.  “Pardon?”

“The design of my castle,” she said, as if it should have been painfully obvious.  “How am I to take your place as ruler of this realm without anywhere to rule _from?”_

He really shouldn’t be helping her with that, but dangit, the temptation of having _something_ to do was too strong.  It wasn’t as if she would have time to actually construct the thing, after all, he certainly wouldn’t be lending any assistance _there,_ so there was no harm in merely planning it as a mental exercise.  And he really wanted to draw a castle, okay?  He snatched the paper and spread it out on the table, conjuring a pencil.

“Alright, you’re _definitely_ going to need more spikey bits here… No, no, this is all wrong-” he erased an entire section of the building- “this should be over _here,_ and then maybe some spires… Oh, and of course there’s got to be a wall with a nice, intimidating front gate…”  Without her noticing, he also scribbled in a small back-door entry.  No impenetrable stronghold would be complete without a way to sneak in, obviously.

Soon he was flipping the paper over to sketch different angles on the back, and then unconsciously summoning up more, so absorbed in messy floor plans that he didn’t notice when the sun went down.  The witch watched over his shoulder as he muttered to himself, smirking at how easy it had been to get him going.  Eventually, he finished off one last illegible annotation with a flourish and stepped back proudly.  “Done! Beautiful, right?”

She stepped around him and shuffled through the papers.  “Oh, yes, you’re so talented!”  He preened.  She glanced sideways at him, a glint in her silver eyes and a smug smile tugging at her lips, and he faltered, realizing he may possibly have made a slight mistake.  “And so, so _incredibly easy_ to manipulate.”  

Her eyes flashed green.  He gasped and braced himself on the table.  It felt as though someone had wrapped a hand around his internal organs and given a sharp tug.   _Something_ was torn from him, forced violently out into the world.  His closest reference point was a dream gone wrong, the feeling of nightmares forming themselves from his creative power against his wishes, only so much stronger.  He couldn’t breathe for a second, and then the witch flicked a hand at him before he could try to move, walking away and leaving him frozen in place.  He could only watch as she oh-so-casually opened a wooden door that definitely had _not_ existed before, on the opposite side of the room from the window, and stepped out into a long torch-lit hallway, taking his sword with her.  “Thanks for the castle, Princey,” she sang while closing the door.  There was the metallic sound of a key in a lock, and he stumbled a bit as her magic dissipated from the air around him.

“No,” he said out loud, surprising himself with how angry he sounded.  “No! How could I be such an _idiot!”_  He swept the papers off the table in frustration, and the look he gave them as they fluttered harmlessly to the floor should by all rights have burst them into flame.  “I finally get a chance to do something in this story, the story _I_ was supposed to be the hero of, _might I remind you-”_  He appeared to be reminding the lantern.  “-and the _one_ thing I’ve been able to do in like a _week,_ it all goes _completely flipping pear-shaped!_  It’s not _fair!”_  

He was vaguely aware that this was the literal definition of throwing a tantrum, but given that no one could see him anyway, he didn’t particularly care.  In fact, he decided to go ahead and throw a pillow, too, while he was at it. Then he accidentally knocked the lantern off the table, _again,_ while pacing angrily around the room, and then the pillow he’d just thrown was on fire and so were the drawings, and the lantern survived but he burned his hand retrieving it and at that point he was too frustrated and tired to clean up properly, so he didn’t.  He just fell into a convenient chair and glared at nothing in particular, trying to get himself under control before his burning anger morphed into hot tears.  Stupid, stupid, _stupid._

He couldn’t tell how long it took him to calm down.  When he felt like sitting up properly again, it was really dark outside, and that was all he knew.  The lantern was flickering, because a lot of its oil was now pooled around the charred remains of paper and fabric and fluff.  He simply snapped his fingers to get rid of _that_ mess, now that he was stable and not at risk of making it worse instead.  While he was at it, he cleaned _himself_ up and changed into some more comfortable clothes for sleeping, red flannel pajama pants and a soft t-shirt.  He sat on the edge of the bed, dropped his head into his hands, and sighed.

“Am I… losing control?”

The room didn’t respond.  His own thoughts tried to answer him instead, and he didn’t much appreciate what they had to offer.  The evidence was beginning to add up, as Logan would say, probably while dressed as Sherlock Holmes for some reason.  Getting stuck here in the first place could be dismissed as a fluke.  The others having influence over his realm, well, that made sense, given the way it responded to _his_ thoughts, although that didn’t mean he liked it.  But the Dragon Witch hijacking his power to bring an entire castle into existence?  That should not have been able to happen. He _created her._  She was a figment of his own imagination.  Why was she suddenly doing things he didn’t expect, or understand, or know how to stop?  It was… scary.  He had never been genuinely afraid of anything here, always knowing on some level that none of it was real, but this scared him.

He wanted to conjure up a new pillow, but was hit with the probably-irrational fear that it wouldn’t work and he would have proof that his power was fading.  Maybe leaving him entirely, stranding him here, never to return to Thomas except in dreams, where he would desperately try to get a message through each night only to have it forgotten upon waking and _okay no this was not a hypothetical narrative he needed to follow to its conclusion, that was only making things worse, stupid brain seizing on anything it could turn dramatic and taking it way further than necessary._  This was exactly why he needed the others to get here soon.  Logan would bring him back to what was real and actually happening when his thoughts ran away with him like that, and Patton would surely give him a hug and believe in him so hard he’d forget he ever doubted himself, and Virgil would make him feel better just by being there, ready to stop him if he tried to do anything _else_ stupid for the sake of showing off.  He and Logan were basically 85% of Roman’s impulse control, but Virgil was the one willing to literally tackle him to prevent a bad decision.  He’d never expected to miss that.

This wasn’t getting him anywhere productive, and he couldn’t sleep with his thoughts in such turmoil.  He gave up after fifteen minutes of trying and sat up. The room was nearly pitch-black, but there was a dim sliver of light coming through the crack under the newly-extant door, making the mirror appear to glow.  Maybe he would just check on them once more before going to sleep, just, you know, to see how far they had gotten since last time.  They were almost certainly asleep by now, but still.  He felt his way carefully across the darkened room and pressed a hand against the cold glass of the mirror, focusing his thoughts on his friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: a little manipulation possibly, breaking things as a response to anger
> 
> me writing the dragon witch: wow i sure am a lesbian  
> i was gonna make her look like symmetra's dragon skin from the overwatch halloween event but i think i would have physically combusted so i didnt sorry
> 
> next time: what HAS been going on with the others? we'll find out!


	7. In which weird stuff happens in the forest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings in endnotes
> 
> im too tired to think of anything witty to say about this chapter i already used up all my good words writing it

Even just on the outskirts, something felt  _ different _ about the Fae Forest- different from the rest of the world, that is.  A tingling Virgil couldn’t seem to shake out of his hands. Patton bouncing on his feet, saying he felt like a soda can someone had just shaken up for a prank.  The forest was clearly as full of magic as it was of trees, and they could sense it.

Logan didn’t feel a thing.  This supported his theory that, unlike the other two, he had not acquired any magical abilities upon entering the Imagination.  It was unfortunate, because if he’d had his own, he could have easily studied it. Patton wouldn’t agree to Logan intentionally hurting himself just to watch him heal it, and Virgil’s power had so far only been able to manifest when he felt himself to be in immediate danger, which was not a situation  _ anyone _ wanted to replicate.  Although, to be fair, if he tried it he’d most likely get to see Patton’s magic up close again as well.  If nothing else, it would be efficient.

In any case, he didn’t really want or need to  _ feel _ that things were strange.  He still had eyes, and he knew it wasn’t normal for a school of tiny blue-green fish to be swimming through the air in the middle of a forest.  They weren’t disturbed when Patton walked right into their midst, and in fact, to his delight, some even brushed up against him. They were a little more wary of Virgil putting a hand out to touch them, but appeared to decide as a group that he wasn’t threatening.  He pulled away first, in fact, when a particularly bold fish tried to bite him, which didn’t actually hurt since it was so small, but was still not appreciated.

The creatures- whatever they really were, it couldn’t actually be fish- were clearly not especially skittish around humans.  So why, when Logan finally approached for a closer look, did they all dart away as soon as he got within a foot of them? “Oh, come on,” he said as they regrouped and flew away into the treetops.  “Do I really look that scary to you? ...I’m talking to magic fish right now, this place is making me lose my mind.”

Patton looked disappointed.  Logan patted his shoulder. “I’m sure there will be more absurd fauna for you to look at later.”  Patton nodded, cheering himself up with thoughts of what they might find further on. Maybe there would be flying  _ dogs. _

“So, magical forest,” Virgil said in an attempt to dispel the slight awkwardness.  “I bet it’s  _ haunted.” _  He smirked and circled around behind Patton.  “Boo!” Patton squeaked in surprise and stumbled into Logan, giggling, even though there was no way he didn’t see that coming.  

Logan was about to start up the same speech he gave  _ every _ time Virgil brought up the supernatural, citing the subjective and/or dubious quality of all the available evidence for such things, but then he remembered they were in Roman’s world now and very little of his expertise on basically anything was applicable.  Maybe it  _ was _ haunted, who knew.  Certainly not Logan. He really could not wait to be out of here.  He kept his mouth shut and gave the world in general an annoyed look, suddenly very irritated with how bright and sparkly and  _ unrealistic _ everything was.  Roman had just better appreciate his putting up with this.

Patton, at least, was once again in a great mood.  He had more energy than he knew what to do with thanks to the concentration of magic, and Virgil muttered something along the lines of “not this again” as he held him back from running off the path after some fireflies or something he’d spotted.  “We have to stay on the path or we’re gonna get lost, can you  _ please _ stop stressing me out?”

“It felt like they wanted me to follow them,” Patton defended.

“I’ll just  _ bet _ they did.”

Logan had to agree with Virgil.  “Our goal is to locate Roman and bring him back to the mindscape before morning, we do not have time for chasing fireflies.”

“Okay, you’re right, I guess.”  Patton sighed. “I’m just getting kinda tired of walking.  I thought this would be more fun.”

“Is walking supposed to be fun?”  Logan would never understand the strange expectations Patton had for the entertainment value of things as simple as getting from point A to point B.

“Oh, I know, we should play a game!”

“...What kind of game are we talking here?”  Virgil didn’t trust the games Patton came up with, not since that time he got Roman to stick his hand in hot wax.

“I dunno, like… games you play when you’re going somewhere and it takes a long time.  Like… I Spy! I’ll start,” he added, seeing that they still weren’t entirely on board.  “I spy, with my little eye…” He ignored Logan’s protest that his eyes were no substantial amount smaller than anyone else’s.  “Something… purple!”

“Me.”

“It’s clearly Virgil.”

“I am literally the only thing around here that’s even a little bit purple, it’s, like… really obvious.  Sorry.”

“But it still got you playing!  Your turn next since you guessed it first!”

“Augh, fine.  I spy, uh… something green.”

Logan just raised an eyebrow, realizing what he was looking at immediately and deciding it would be cheating to say it.  “I am not participating in this round.”

“Is it… grass?”

“No.”

“That tree?”

“Nope.”

_ “That _ tree?”

“It’s not a tree.”

“Hmm.  You’re really  _ stumping _ me here, kiddo… let me think… the green part of a flower?  Bushes? Moss?”

Virgil shook his head in the negative to all three.  “Give up yet?”

“Well, I don’t seem to be getting anywhere…  What is it?”

“It was the leaf in your hair.”

Patton ran a hand over his head and found the foliage in question, pulling it out and staring at it.   _ “What, _ there was a leaf in my hair this whole time?  I couldn’t see it, that’s not fair… Your turn now, Lo!”

“Yeah, Logan, what do your normal-sized eyes spy?”

Logan sighed and gave in.  “I’m looking at something red.”

The red thing was a small wildflower growing along the path, which Patton picked and handed to him as soon as he figured it out.  Apparently it was against the rules of the game to toss it back on the ground, and far be it from Logan to question the rules Patton had made up just then, so he tucked it behind his ear and let his glasses clip it in place.  That was simply the easiest way to carry it without risking it being crushed in his bag. It was the  _ rules, _ okay?

The game went on for a few more minutes, and they were starting to run out of original things to “spy.”  Logan’s turn came around, as turns are wont to do, and he cast about for something new. “Something… hmm…”  An odd noise in the trees above them caught his attention, and he looked up, still walking. Something was rustling around in the branches, it seemed like, and  _ clicking, _ but what was it?  “…Something  _ black?” _

“You can’t do Virgil again, I already--”

The rest of Patton’s sentence was cut off by his scream of terror.  Logan started to turn around, and then Virgil literally  _ tackled _ him out of the way.  As they hit the ground he caught a glimpse of a massive black tarantula, as tall as he was, dropping onto the path where he’d been standing just a second ago.

“Go go go go go,” Patton chanted, pulling them both to their feet and almost vibrating with the desire to be  _ literally anywhere else right now immediately. _  Under the circumstances, they didn’t need to be told.  They fled into the forest, caring less about not getting lost than about not getting eaten.

They didn’t slow down until the sound of the giant spider behind them had long faded into normal, peaceful forest sounds.  When they did, it was getting dark. Virgil shot down the idea of making camp where they were before Logan had even finished suggesting it.  He didn’t like the idea of sleeping in this forest at  _ all, _ let alone somewhere so exposed.  Patton didn’t say anything to smooth over the disagreement like he normally would- in fact, he was completely silent, just gripping both their hands and occasionally closing his eyes and shuddering.  Logan argued that he clearly needed to rest and recover, and Virgil shot back that what he  _ really _ needed was to get out of this stupid forest as soon as possible, and Patton just wished they would stop fighting about it, and that his voice would work to say so.

Somehow- magic, probably- his wishes were granted.  Just as the two were starting to raise their voices, they stumbled into a clearing.  There was a small cliff at one end of the grassy semicircle, and in front of it a small group of conifers, their branches and fallen needles creating a soft, sheltered spot that was almost too perfect to be real.  Which it wasn’t, of course; it was imaginary. Virgil stopped mid-sentence, looked over at Logan and nodded.

It was warm enough that they didn’t need a fire, which was good, because they probably couldn’t have actually made one if they’d tried.  Or, if they could, they would’ve set the forest on fire or something. Logan dug through his Mary Poppins-esque bag and pulled out a folded square of fabric resembling a cross between a tarp and a bedsheet, which they spread out over the pine needles, weighing the corners down with rocks.  

Patton sat at the far edge with the cliff at his back and looked up at the moonlight starting to filter through the branches over his head, blinking away the pressure behind his eyes.  Why couldn’t anything just be nice and fun and  _ not _ turn into running away?  It was like he wasn’t allowed to have a good time without something happening to ruin it.  They’d work through his list of worst fears in no time at this rate, having already covered “spiders” and “not being able to help someone who needed him.”

“I wish Roman was here,” he said, quietly enough that only he himself heard it.  He rubbed his arms, voice falling even more. “I-I really wish…” Roman would have killed that awful monster for him, and he wouldn’t be wondering now if it was going to show up again when they least expected it.  And he would have known the right things to say to calm everyone down back in Deercross. And Patton wouldn’t  _ miss him _ so much right now.  He knew getting him back was sort of the whole point of the quest, but it would be so much better if he could be  _ here _ for it instead.

Virgil leaned on a tree, still standing, and looked distrustfully at the darkness of the surrounding forest for a long minute.  “I think we should have someone stay awake,” he finally said. “Just in case anything  _ happens.” _

“We can take turns,” Patton suggested, liking the general concept but not the idea of Virgil being up all night by himself with all the spooky forest noises and responsibility.

“Sure, whatever.  I’ll--”

“I can take the first shift,” Logan interrupted.  “There are some things I want to do before sleeping anyway.”  He was fully aware that if Virgil took it he wouldn’t sleep at all, and Patton would either get distracted after ten minutes or overreact to every little sound, there was no in-between.

Virgil shot him a look and immediately responded, “Second.  Wake me up in a couple hours.” Logan nodded. They both knew there would only be two shifts, regardless of what Patton thought, so he  mentally changed  _ a couple _ to  _ about four. _  He sat against one of the trees near the edge of the little cluster, careful not to get too comfortable and risk falling asleep, and opened his satchel.

It was much too dark to read now, but that wasn’t going to stop him.  He pulled a sturdy palm-sized glass bottle from an internal pocket, something he’d prepared much earlier that day while still at the inn.  Hopefully it would work as intended and not set him on fire. The bottle contained two stratified liquids, one red and one blue, and when he gave it an experimental shake, the two swirled together and turned white, emitting a light that was just bright enough to read by without completely destroying his night vision.  Perfect. Yes, it was essentially just a more fanciful version of a glow-stick, but he’d made it and it worked.

He had more ambitious plans now.  First, though, he found a page in one of his books detailing the uses of the wildflower currently stuck behind his ear, and wrapped it in some extra paper in order to press it there without damaging the actual pages.  Maybe it would turn out to be useful at some point, or maybe it would just turn out to be pretty. He then exchanged that book for the thicker alchemy one, flipping through the pages and laying out various materials on the ground in front of him.  Oh, and he was paying attention to the forest, too, of course, since that was the main reason why he was up. Obviously.

It was a little more difficult to get things measured out right with the low light and lack of a level surface to work on, but precision was something Logan was very good at.  He mixed together colorful powders, liquids that came in strangely-shaped bottles, and something that looked a lot like normal craft glitter but was supposedly crucial to the process.  Then he had to wait. He set a timer on his phone and actually focused on his job for a while, not that anything was happening. 

When the forest became painfully uninteresting, he glanced back at his sleeping friends.  Despite having promised personal space, Patton was very clingy in his sleep and had unconsciously cuddled up against Virgil’s back, even throwing an arm over him at one point.  He didn’t appear to mind this invasion as much as Logan would have expected, though, going off the fact that he had only moved the offending arm when it woke him up instead of pushing Patton away entirely.  His gaze lingered on them longer than he intended, enjoying the peacefulness they seemed to radiate, and he came dangerously close to feeling sleepy himself. That wasn’t ideal, he should… move around or something… 

Logan’s phone alarm buzzed softly, set to the quietest vibration level it had, yet still making him jump.  He turned it off quickly before it could disrupt the others’ sleep. Having sat undisturbed for half an hour, his mixture was finally ready for use. He took a small brush and painted the shimmering concoction around the edges of a small hand mirror he’d found wrapped up in several layers of protective cloth.  It dried quickly and then disappeared, leaving only traces of glitter on the frame. Hoping he’d done it right, he brushed his fingers lightly over the mirror itself, trying not to smudge it, and summoned a mental image of Roman.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: spiders
> 
> logans pov is great because i dont have to worry about making sure his thoughts sound natural he just actually thinks in gramatically correct full sentences


	8. In which Logan invents fantasy Skype

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings in endnotes
> 
> do you like 2000 words of just dialogue? then have i got a chapter for you
> 
> im not posting in the middle of the night my-time for once are you guys proud of me

Roman’s mirror glowed softly for a second, then changed to show him an overhead view of a small clearing in the forest.  It was fairly dark, but he could tell his friends had made camp there, and Logan appeared to be on… well, largely ignoring the duty of being on watch.  Before he could make out any more details, though, the scene disappeared. He tapped the mirror a few times and tried to get it functioning again to no avail.  Just as he was about to give up and lament the fact that even  _ this _ wasn’t working for him now, a portion of it lit up again.  Only a small oval, but that was better than showing him nothing.  He was more than a little confused when what it showed him was a close-up view of Logan, looking right at him and very pleased with himself.

“Oh, good, it worked,” Logan said, just above a whisper.

“Wh-  _ what _ worked?  How have you done this, and what exactly the heck is this that you  _ did?” _

“It was a simple matter of following instructions.”  He tilted his hand mirror to show Roman the alchemy book he’d been working from and what was left of the mixture.  “It seemed like a good idea to check on you, so, remembering that you had mentioned a magic mirror, I made one of my own.  It seems that viewing each other simultaneously gives us a more direct connection, which I did not expect, but is very helpful.”

“Oh.”  Roman had never needed to go through any sort of  _ process _ to make things enchanted, they just sort of  _ were, _ but he supposed it made sense for Logan.  More importantly, though, he didn’t remember ever putting  _ any _ kind of defined alchemy system in place for this world, which meant… “Wait, did you come into my  _ fantasy world _ and  _ immediately cause science to exist? _  I don’t know what to say.  You’ve somehow managed to become even nerdier here.”

“Thank you.”

“It wasn’t… never mind.  Oh- I’ve been trying to keep an eye on you guys, but I was… somewhat  _ distracted _ this evening, unfortunately.  I didn’t miss anything important, did I?”

“As a matter of fact,” Logan said, striving to convey the degree of annoyance he felt without raising his voice, “you  _ did. _  We were  _ attacked. _  You could have at least warned us there might be a possibility of  _ unreasonably sized arachnids trying to eat us.” _

Roman’s eyes widened.  “Oh dear. I, uh, that completely slipped my mind.”  In his defense, he didn’t like to think about giant man-eating spiders any more than strictly necessary.  “Sorry. But you weren’t hurt, right?”

“No, we were able to lose it in the forest.”

“Good.”  And a huge relief in more ways than one.  Close calls were an adventuring staple, although Logan probably wouldn’t appreciate being told so, which meant his ruling on what kind of story this was- the kind where nobody got seriously injured and the heroes always won in the end- hadn’t lost its power.  “...Wait, how far did you have to  _ go _ to lose it?  Where  _ are _ you?”

Logan glanced up at the sky, looked in a few different directions, and appeared to be doing math in his head.  Finally he turned back to Roman and said with confidence, “I have absolutely no idea.”

“Oh, for…  You’re  _ lost?” _

“Excuse me for not tracking the exact route we took while trying not to die!”

Roman sighed.  “You’re supposed to stay on the path for a  _ reason, _ you know, it’s nearly  _ impossible _ to find it again once you’re deep enough in the forest.  It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s just going to take you at least another day to get out now, if not more.  I suppose it would be too much to ask that you actually try  _ fighting _ the thing instead next time, but running away from everything doesn’t make for a very good story.”

Logan raised an eyebrow, not amused.  “Was that a joke, or do you have some delusion of any of us actually doing that?”

“Okay, I suppose not, you can’t all be as awesome as me.”  It was a comment that could have lightened the mood a bit, had he not sounded genuinely frustrated by the fact that they couldn’t do the things he himself easily could have.

“How silly of you to forget how much better you clearly are than everyone else.”  Logan dialed up the sarcasm in case Roman tried to take it as a genuine compliment.  “Despite the fact that you failed to mention  _ several _ things that could have, and in fact almost did go horribly wrong.”

“Look, it’s not as if I  _ knew _ there would be--”

“What about earlier?  Did you know everyone in that town would be so eager to make assumptions based on Virgil’s unconventional appearance?  Could you not have warned us about  _ that, _ or maybe even  _ not given them that prejudice in the first place? _  Are there any more unpleasant surprises you’re not telling us about, Roman?  We’re actual  _ people, _ not characters in your  _ story, _ and I for one do not appreciate all the plot twists!”

Roman was speechless for a few seconds, taken aback and starting to get a little angry himself.  “As a matter of fact,  _ no, _ I can’t  _ see the future, _ but thanks so much for blaming everything on  _ me _ when it’s you three who have been messing with my perfectly good creations since you got here!  I’ve never even seen this part of the forest or I’d tell you how to get out of it, but no, you had to make it more confusing than it already was and stick in a whole  _ cliff _ that never existed before.  Besides, I don’t have complete control under  _ any _ circumstances, I can’t make people do whatever I want, and if you think that’s how it works you’ve clearly never written fiction before!”  That wasn’t quite true, he did  _ invent _ the place, after all, he could have chosen to make them more open-minded- and would, when he had time to change it- but right now he couldn’t do anything about it anyway, and he was feeling defensive to begin with, and Logan was yelling at him about things someone like him couldn’t possibly even  _ understand, _ and he wasn’t about to concede any points  _ now. _

“I hope you don’t mean to imply that  _ we _ caused any of this,” Logan said coldly.

“No, that wasn’t what I- I just- look, I am  _ not having a good day, _ alright?  I-”

“Oh,  _ you’re _ not- and what kind of day do you think Patton and Virgil and I have been having?”

Roman ignored him and kept talking, punctuating his run-on sentence with gestures towards things Logan couldn’t actually see.  “I’ve been stuck in this tiny room by myself for like a  _ week _ now and there’s nothing to  _ do, _ you don’t understand how  _ awful _ it is not being able to  _ do anything, _ I can’t even see outside, it’s the  _ worst, _ and I’m not  _ supposed _ to be the one this happens to, but nothing is going right anymore and now  _ you’re _ mad at me and it’s not even my  _ fault _ , it’s the stupid Dragon Witch,  _ she’s _ ruining everything and she just had to come rub it in earlier and I can’t do anything  _ right _ anymore and now she has this whole stupid  _ castle _ because I  _ can’t do anything right--” _

“Wait,  _ what?” _

Roman froze.  He hadn’t meant to let that slip, but he was just so  _ frustrated, _ and whatever, they would have found out when they saw it anyway.  “I- she  _ tricked _ me, okay?  It was- it was  _ very cunning.” _

“You made her a  _ castle? _  You couldn’t do anything about the things that happened to us but you can create a whole  _ castle _ for your  _ antagonist? _  I know  _ you _ have some strange need to make things as hard as possible for yourself, but there’s no need to force that on  _ us!” _

_ “I didn’t do it on purpose! _  I- frankly, I don’t think I even did it by mistake!  I don’t  _ know _ what happened, I…”

“You… don’t know?  How can you not- clearly you did  _ something,” _ Logan said, confused and exasperated.

“Okay, so I  _ thought _ about a castle, but I think about  _ plenty  _ of things that don’t end up  _ forcing themselves into existence against my will, _ so I still hardly think I can be blamed!”

“Against your- you mean you really didn’t just… make it without thinking, or something?”

“Of course I didn’t  _ make it without thinking! _  I was  _ specifically _ thinking that I  _ wasn’t _ going to make it, and then- she  _ used _ me, I don’t know how, and it is quite honestly a little scary, so I would  _ love _ if you would just  _ leave me alone about it!” _  Oh, and now he’d gone and told him  _ everything, _ which was another thing he’d specifically wanted to not do, and Logan knew exactly how badly he’d screwed up and was probably going to yell at him even more and respect him even less.  Roman looked anywhere but at the mirror, wishing he hadn’t said any of that. There was a silence he didn’t know how to fill.

“...I apologize.”

Wait, what?

Logan adjusted his glasses needlessly, looking uncomfortable.  “It seems that my initial assessment of the situation was incorrect, and I said some things that… may have been hurtful.  I’m afraid I was listening to my own frustration with recent events rather than what you were trying to tell me. I apologize for not believing you.”

“Oh.”  Roman was a bit shocked.  Apologies from Logan were rare, which he would doubtless say was because he was usually right.  “I… Accepted, I suppose.” This was where he was supposed to also apologize, wasn’t it? “And, uh, sorry I got mad at you for not being very good at adventures when that isn’t your job and I can’t fairly expect it of you.  Do you… want to start the conversation over and… not yell at each other this time? Or, uh, whisper aggressively… you know what I mean.”

“Yes.  Yes, that… sounds good.”  Logan nodded, relieved that for once an argument between them hadn’t ended in someone becoming angry enough to storm out.

“So,” Roman said, tone light and careful.  “What did I miss when I wasn’t watching you?”

Logan thought about it for a moment, and responded just as cautiously.  “We walked for a while, so you didn’t miss much there, and then a giant spider attacked us, but we were able to escape it.  We ran through the forest for a while and ended up in this clearing. They went to sleep-” he turned the mirror so Roman could see the other two sleeping, and heard a soft “aww” from his end- “while I took the first watch, and eventually, contacted you.”

“Yes, I can tell you’ve been doing an admirable job of watching,” Roman said dryly.

“I would notice if anything actually happened,” Logan defended himself, “which it hasn’t and most likely won’t.  How about you, how did  _ your _ day go?”

Roman sighed, folding his arms as he recalled it.  “The witch came in to gloat about having me trapped here, you know, basic villain stuff, and she got me thinking about this castle she wanted, and I knew I  _ shouldn’t _ but I was  _ so bored _ I ended up planning it, don’t yell at me, and then she… I don’t know… she got into my head somehow and pulled it out and it existed.  And now I don’t know if I can trust myself to think about  _ anything _ I don’t want to actually happen anymore.”  He looked uncharacteristically dejected at the thought of having to restrain his thoughts, not being able to escape his boredom with another layer of daydream in case something went bad, and that kind of sadness on him struck Logan as deeply wrong.

“I… may have some thoughts that could help with that,” he offered.

“Really?”  Roman’s expression did a complete 180, and Logan had to take a second to process it.  He looked thoroughly eager to hear what Logan had to say, which was Logan’s favorite kind of look to get.  He was almost tempted to draw out the suspense just to get a little more of it, but no, that was silly.

Logan shrugged.  “Well, she can’t actually read your mind, right?  Otherwise she would know we were coming to find you, and would have stopped us by now.  I doubt she’ll try to create anything through you if she doesn’t know what you’re thinking about.”

“True,” Roman agreed.  “She might end up with an angry manticore-chimera in the middle of the room.”

“...Sure.  Is that really what you spend your time thinking about?  Never mind, don’t answer that. As I was saying, just be on your guard next time she talks to you, and if you notice her trying to lead your thoughts somewhere, you can… I don’t know, distract yourself.  You’re  _ good _ at not paying attention to what people are saying to you; it shouldn’t be a problem.  If it is, though, you could try practicing meditation to teach yourself to clear your mind or refocus your thoughts when you need to.  Don’t give me that look, it’s not like you have anything better to do and it helps, ask Virgil. And if you don’t like any of  _ those _ ideas,” he added with a slight smirk, “you can always try making up absurdly dangerous creatures in your head out of spite every time she’s in the room.”

Roman laughed, muffling the sound with his hand.  “Sounds good to me. I think I’ll- oh shoot don’t say anything, shh--”  He spun to face the door and snapped a cloth into existence to cover the mirror.  Logan kept still to avoid accidentally clinking any bottles together or anything, and stayed as quiet as possible until the darkness morphed back into Roman’s face.

“I heard a noise in the hallway,” he explained in his softest whisper.  “I don’t think she heard anything, but I’d rather not risk it. I should go.”

Logan nodded in agreement.  “And we both need to sleep at some point tonight.   _ I _ have a good reason to be awake right now, but I doubt very much that  _ you _ do.”

“Oh, hush, you’re not my mother.  You’re not even Patton. Speaking of which, you’ll let the others use that thing too, right?”

“Of course, I’ll show them tomorrow.  Go to bed.”

_ “Fineee.” _  He broke the connection with a needlessly dramatic hand gesture, rolling his eyes.

Logan rolled his eyes in return even though he couldn’t be seen anymore, deactivated his own mirror by simply tapping the frame, and packed it carefully in a few layers of cotton padding before tucking it back into his satchel.  He didn’t really understand Roman, didn’t even  _ like _ him sometimes, but talking to him had been… good.  Despite the initial fighting, or maybe because of it, he felt better about things now.  He packed up the rest of his things and checked the time on his phone. About time to switch out.  He stood and made his way over to the blanket-tarp-thing, which he really wished he knew the proper name for, but that wasn’t particularly relevant right now.  Going to sleep was relevant right now.

Virgil opened his eyes almost before Logan had actually made contact with his shoulder, making him wonder if he’d even been asleep in the first place.  He  _ was _ a very light sleeper.  Hopefully the whispering hadn’t woken him up.  He turned onto his stomach and stretched, catlike, before getting up to trade places.  Logan nodded to him and lay down, sighing in resignation when Patton immediately latched onto his arm.  It wasn’t as if he could wake him up and tell him to stop, and he probably wouldn’t stop anyway, since this was apparently his natural instinct when unconscious.  “Your problem now,” Virgil mouthed over his shoulder before walking away.

Virgil leaned against a tree and slid down it until he was on the ground, rubbing his eyes with a sigh.  In terms of places he could sleep, this was a whole lot worse than the inn. Pine needles weren’t actually all that great at being a comfortable thing to lie on, and being in the forest had him on edge.  He’d been drifting between various states of half-consciousness at best. At least his “ability” to stay awake until the sun came up was going to be useful now, for once. He pushed his hood down to make sure he wouldn’t miss any important sounds and settled in to wait for morning.

He didn’t fall asleep at any point, he was sure of that, but one moment everything was normal and the next, when he opened his eyes after blinking, the clearing had been blanketed in a thick fog.  Not just thick,  _ heavy- _ pressing him into the ground, slowing his movements.  He went to stand up and felt like he was trying to run underwater, or in a nightmare- the futility was the same.  The air had the approximate resistance of peanut butter, and a similar ability to keep him from speaking when he tried to open his mouth and call for the others.  A cool breeze that should have been soothing sent an uncomfortable prickling sensation throughout his body and made his hair stand on end. Something was  _ wrong, _ and he may not have been able to say what it was, but it was most definitely  _ not _ just him being vague.

He pushed himself to his feet, using the tree beside him for support.  The distance to the cliff had become daunting, but he had to get over there, he needed to  _ warn them. _  Walking was suddenly the most difficult thing he’d ever had to do.  Whatever force this was might not want him to move in any  _ other _ direction, but it would be perfectly happy to let him go down, and getting up had been hard enough the first time.  He fought to reach the next closest tree, and then the next, stopping to rest and take deep breaths of air that wasn’t quite air.  He was so close.

So close, no more than fifteen feet away, and yet close wasn’t good enough when he still couldn’t reach them, couldn’t make a sound.  The fog was filling his head, or maybe that numb, muffled feeling was just the result of it filling his lungs. It was growing denser around him.  It was closing in. He couldn’t move. No, _no,_ he _had_ to move, he was going to move.  He took another step and faltered, the air pushing him down with renewed force, but caught himself.  The trees spun around him for a second. _Come on, please,_ _so close._  Fog swirled around him in a gust of wind that did nothing to help him breathe, tugging at his clothes and hair, circling tendrils around his limbs that didn’t quite dissipate with the rest.  He was officially very scared, and it was a struggle just to remain standing, and he still had no idea what this was or what he could do even if he _did_ make it to his friends, but he had to try _something._

He moved forward once more and nearly fell, feeling as if he’d been tripped, but there was nothing to trip over when he looked down.  His head spun, and he bit his lip, trying to focus. It had gotten cold, a damp chill seeping through his robes and permeating his body.   _ One more step, come on. _  He pushed himself forward, and then everything tilted and he was on the ground, cursing internally.  He struggled to sit up and froze, eyes wide with fear.

Humanoid figures were emerging from the fog, or possibly forming themselves from it, too unsettlingly tall to actually be mistaken for human.  They were featureless, being made of fog and all, and yet he couldn’t help but feel like they were staring at him. He stared back, eyes narrowed, trying to convey despite his inability to speak that they better not try anything.  Unfortunately, everyone involved knew perfectly well there was nothing he could do about it, and they didn’t appear to care. 

They started closing in, and he was trying to get up and he just couldn’t, and he wondered distantly where that magic went that had been so eager to protect him earlier when he didn’t even want it, and then one of them got close enough to touch Logan and  _ oh, there it was. _  Sparking angrily in his hand.  Which was out in front of him now somehow, despite his arms previously being too heavy to lift.  The offending fog-creature may or may not have turned to look at him, and he glared back at where he imagined its eyes probably were.  It backed off. His mouth twisted into a slightly terrifying half-smile, and he was starting to like this “having scary magic powers” thing, and then one of them appeared behind him and pressed a cold, ghostlike hand to his forehead and the sparks fizzled out as everything went dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: none for the first part and for the second part i dont really know but im gonna throw "maybe suffocation?" and "nightmare-type weirdness" out there and see if they stick?
> 
> that bit at the end kinda got away from me a little


	9. In which even weirder stuff happens in the forest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Virgil is fully prepared to throw down with the local flora. Logan experiences a videogame tutorial level. Patton gets lost through, for once, no fault of his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oof it's been over a month since i updated this... finals are over now though! i have officially survived high school
> 
> warnings in endnotes

Virgil came to in an unfamiliar part of the forest with an awful headache.  He shot to his feet as soon as he remembered what had happened. He could move normally now, at least, but the sense of danger he felt only increased as he took in his surroundings.

Neither of his friends were anywhere to be seen, and he had a feeling it wouldn’t be a good idea to try calling for them.  It shouldn’t be nighttime at this point, but it certainly seemed like it was. The main difference was that instead of crickets and whatever making noise, there was a near-total eerie silence, save for the occasional rustling of leaves.  The trees above him were simply so thick that almost no light reached the ground, not to mention bigger in  _ every _ dimension than Virgil was entirely comfortable with a tree or anything else being.  He didn’t like being loomed over, even by plants. The point was, he couldn’t see more than a few feet ahead with any clarity.  The air had an earthy, almost primeval scent, so strong it overwhelmed him at first, and it was strangely cold despite the fact that every day previous had been practically summery.  He suspected it was a result of the location, not the actual weather. Wherever he was, it did not feel like a place he wanted to be.

He bent down to pull a silver-handled dagger out of its hiding place in his boot and walked forward slowly, doing his best not to step on anything loud.  It wasn’t just the trees that were thick. With the amount of underbrush and weird roots sticking up around here, he’d almost believe the forest was actively trying to trip him.  He really, really hoped it wasn’t, but… you never know. Something touched the back of his neck and he whipped around ready to defend himself- it was only a vine hanging down from a branch, but he took a step away from it anyway.  He wasn’t going to trust  _ anything _ around here, no matter how inanimate it may appear to be.

His footsteps crunched on the ground, obvious in the silence despite his best efforts.  The only thing louder was his heartbeat. He had a growing certainty that he was being watched, though it had been fifteen minutes and he had yet to see another living creature, and put his hood up in an attempt to block out the feeling of eyes on him from behind.

The brush tangling at his feet grew steadily thicker and taller the further he walked, reaching almost to his hips.  Thorns tore at his clothes, and he thanked his past self for designing an outfit that covered all his skin. Maybe this was a sign he was going the right way…  _ or _ maybe it was a sign he was going the  _ wrong _ way and was headed toward an even more dangerous area.  The thought that  _ this _ area had yet to prove itself at all dangerous didn’t even cross his mind- he was too busy wondering what might be ahead.

He turned around, having second-guessed himself enough that he thought maybe he should just go back the way he’d come and try a less prickly direction, only to find that the way he’d come wasn’t… there anymore.  The growth behind him was now so thick he couldn’t force his way through it if he tried, and he feared that if he tried  _ too _ hard he’d end up stuck and probably, like, die there or something.  Well… either he was going the right way after all, or it was too late now to escape the trap he’d walked into.  He turned back around, swallowing hard and shifting his grip on his dagger, and pushed on.

 

* * *

 

 

When Logan opened his eyes, he found himself in a strange cavern.  A torch on the wall nearby cast flickering light and shadow on the area around him.  He stood and brushed himself off, and found his bag on the ground nearby. The contents didn’t appear to have been disturbed, which left the motives of whoever had put him here a complete enigma.  “Curiouser and curiouser,” he muttered to himself, raising an eyebrow. The reference seemed fitting.

He wasn’t going to find out where he was or how he’d gotten there by standing around wondering about it.  He took the torch down, careful not to burn himself, and went to investigate the areas still hidden in darkness.  It turned out that he was in less of a cave and more of a decently sized room carved out of what may have  _ started _ as a cave, in that the opposite side of the cavern featured the outline of a door.  However, there was no handle, and pushing on it did nothing. Fortunately, it wasn’t the only thing on that side.

Something resembling a pipe ran along the floor, connecting the assumed door to a strange device several feet away.  Logan walked over and examined it, finding a convenient bracket to set the torch in on the wall nearby. The device appeared rather simple, the only part of it he could interact with being a currently-useless switch, but the pipe leading up to it twisted around itself in knots and was covered in runes of a presumably magical nature.  He would have liked to take a picture of it, but his phone had long since run out of battery thanks to all the  _ other _ things he’d wanted pictures of, so he settled for scribbling down as much of the writing as he could make out in one of his notebooks.

Just below the switch and at the end of the twisted pipe was a metal bowl.  The outside of the bowl had as much writing all over it as did the pipe itself.  The inside, however, was inscribed with only a single symbol, glowing a faint orange.  Even more of note was the pedestal next to the device, which held a baseball-sized metallic sphere and, beside it, a tool which resembled an expensive ballpoint pen from an alternate universe where pens are one solid piece with no recognizable ink and glow the same orange color as the symbol in that metal bowl.  There seemed to be a fairly obvious solution to try. Logan picked up both items and carefully copied the symbol onto the sphere using the probably-magic writing instrument, painting it with that orange light, then placed it in the bowl.

As soon as the two metal objects touched, the writing on both changed from orange to blue and the room shook with a low grinding sound.  Logan grabbed the pedestal for balance. When he looked up again, the door was open. He smiled faintly, a bit pleased with himself for working out how to open it despite the fact that the solution had practically been handed to him.  Removing the metal ball from the mechanism caused the door to lower again, and he had no desire to be crushed by it, so he left the ball where it was, retrieved his torch and proceeded on to the next chamber. If his tentative theory on what sort of place he’d found himself in was correct, he would have no shortage of opportunities to test his puzzle-solving skills.

 

* * *

 

 

Patton yawned and rolled onto his back, blinking lazily against the warm sunlight that had woken him.  He should get up; his friends were probably waiting on him so they could finish their trip through the forest.  Where were his glasses? Right, a few feet off to the side- Virgil had insisted on putting them a safe distance away so they wouldn’t get broken if he moved around in his sleep.  He always thought of everything. Patton would be lost without him and Logan, both literally and metaphorically.

Speaking of Virgil and Logan, where had those two wandered off to?  When Patton sat up, he didn’t see them anywhere. He shook his head at them even though they weren’t there to see it, clicking his tongue in mild disapproval.  Even if they  _ did _ think he wouldn’t wake up before they came back, it would have been more considerate to leave him a note before going to find their bearings or whatever else they were doing.

“Oh well,” he said to himself, looking around at the clearing.  “I’ll just wait…” If they were here, that’s what they would tell him to do.  They wouldn’t want him to get lost trying to find them. He was sure they would come back soon, anyway, and until then, he had a nice comfy spot to sit against a tree and enjoy the lovely day he’d woken up to.

He sat and waited, and got bored and walked around the clearing for a bit looking for interesting plants, and sat back down in a different spot because he was overheating a little with the sun on him, and waited some more.  What on earth were his friends taking so long to do? He really hoped  _ they _ hadn’t gotten lost!  Maybe he should go look for them after all.  He took another look around, hoping there was some clue as to where they’d gone that he just missed when he first woke up, and… He frowned in confusion.

“Wait a minute…”

There had been a blanket on the ground when he’d fallen asleep, and now there wasn’t, which incidentally meant his hair was full of pine needles, but that wasn’t the important part right now.  He didn’t see how they could have gotten it out from under him and put it away without waking him up. Also, come to think of it, why would they have left him alone and unsupervised when Virgil had previously insisted on holding his hand like he was a small child to make sure nothing happened to him?  And, and the trees, it had been kinda hard to see last night, but he was pretty sure the trees looked different than before!

“Uh-oh,” Patton whispered to himself.  “I don’t think this is the same clearing…”

He had no idea  _ how _ it had happened, but he was in a different place now than he’d been last night.  Maybe all the magic made him start sleepwalking? ...And he’d somehow remembered to bring his glasses with him?  He hoped Logan and Virgil weren’t too worried about him, but knew they almost definitely were if he’d just up and vanished in the night before they could wake him for his turn on watch.

If they hadn’t found him by now, they probably had no idea where he was.  He didn’t have any way to contact them, either, his phone dead for reasons that definitely had nothing to do with playing Candy Crush because he got bored.  The only other thing he could think of to do was just… start walking, and he’d get out of the forest eventually, and then meet back up with his friends when  _ they _ got out.  They’d all walked for a long time yesterday, so it couldn’t be too much farther, right?  (He ignored the fact that they may very well have gone in the complete opposite direction while running away from that… horrible giant murder-bug.  And also the fact that he had no idea which way was out  _ now.) _  He just needed to pick a direction.

“Uh…”  Everything around him looked pretty much the same.  It was all just… trees. He closed his eyes and spun in a circle, only to make himself dizzy and trip over his own feet.  “Haha, whoops,” he laughed at himself. He sat up and almost gasped when he saw the bit of forest he’d landed closest to. He hadn’t noticed from the angle he’d been looking from before, but there was something of a natural path, lit by sunlight that filtered through the trees.  That  _ had _ to lead somewhere!  He stood and brushed the dirt and pine needles off his cloak, feeling much more sure of himself.  “Well then, looks like I’m going that way!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: nothing this time that I can think of, but if I missed something please let me know!
> 
> This chapter was mostly just a setup for the next one, but it got to around 2000 words and I figured it might as well be its own chapter...


	10. In which the forest's trials begin (*insert ominous music here*)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Patton makes some friends. Logan makes complicated arcane machines. Virgil makes a misstep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OOF it's been SEVEN MONTHS since I updated this but it's NOT DEAD I PROMISE
> 
> Warnings in endnotes as usual, and this time there are... quite a few.

Logan was on his fifth “room,” and beginning to wonder just how big this semi-artificial cave system  _ was. _  The puzzles were getting more complex, but all had to do with drawing magical symbols on things.  He was beginning to recognize some of them: this one allowed a machine to draw on a nearby source of magic, this one could teleport an object from one position to another, this one made something translucent so light could pass through it, this one  _ created _ light like a more powerful version of his glow-bottle.  All required magical energy to function. He moved from chamber to chamber, forming arcane circuits and manipulating physics.  This was the most he’d enjoyed himself since entering the Imagination. There were only two things dampening his mood: the fact that everything was still magic, and his concern for how Virgil and Patton were getting on without him.

Hopefully, they were still in the clearing, and would have the sense to wait for him there.  He didn’t have much faith in their common sense when left to their own devices, though, especially Patton.  He would just have to get through the rest of this as quickly as possible so he could find them before they got into too much trouble.

 

* * *

 

Patton felt much better now that he was making progress.  He’d been following his little path for a while now, and it had yet to lead him to a dead end.  And this part of the forest was so much nicer than where they’d all been before! Sure, it was a little foggy beyond the edges of the sunlit trail, and a tad quieter than he would have expected, but otherwise it was a beautiful day.  He wished his friends were with him to see it, too, but he wouldn’t dwell on that, they would find each other soon enough. Besides, although he knew it wasn’t the same, he seemed to be making  _ more _ friends out of just about everything around here.  At the moment, for example, there was a small hot-pink bird with tiny antlers perched on his shoulder, tugging on his hair as if trying to eat it, which kind of hurt, but it was just so cute he wasn’t going to complain, and some kind of fluffy, soft-looking pastel blue rodent at his feet which wouldn’t let Patton pick it up, but seemed happy to run along next to him and keep him company.

He came to a fork in the path and stopped, rubbing his chin and making a thoughtful pout.  “Hmm… Well, either way will probably get me out of here eventually… but I still want to get out as soon as possible so I can find my friends!  What do you think, Mr. Fluffles?”

The animal blinked at him, and seemed slightly affronted by the nickname.  Still, it looked between the options and then darted over to one of the two branches, looking up at him expectantly.

“Aw, thank you!”

He headed in that direction, confident that his small, furry guide knew what it was talking about.  It seemed almost impatient now, darting around his legs as if to urge him forward, and he laughed and tried not to trip over it.  The further he walked, the more magical his surroundings became: giant dandelions nearly as tall as he was and mushrooms large enough to sit on, interspersed with bushes covered in brightly colored fruit.  On impulse, Patton grabbed a bright yellow berry and popped it in his mouth. It tasted like lemonade, the flavor of the fruit without its sourness, but the next one he tried was closer to a mango. Maybe they were all different?  He gathered a few handfuls and filled his cloak’s inner pockets with various colors to snack on as he walked. A voice in the back of his head told him he wouldn’t have been able to do that with Virgil with him, who would have swatted his hands away in case they were poisonous, but he squashed it down- he’d rather have his friends than some berries any day.  He offered one to the bird and kept walking.

 

* * *

 

Roman smiled a little, then sighed with an unreadable mix of emotions, stepping back from his mirror and dispelling the image once again.  He was really starting to wish he’d given it split-screen capabilities. It was bad enough that his friends were separated and he had no idea what had happened- that would teach  _ him _ to listen when Logan told him to go to bed- but the fact that he couldn’t watch them all at once was even worse, because what if something important were to happen when he wasn’t looking?  He would hate to miss one of them finally doing something really cool, or… well, he’d rather not follow the other possible train of thought there, for fear of turning into Virgil. That wouldn’t do at all.  One of him was quite enough.

He paused for a long moment, listening carefully to make sure the witch wasn’t going to walk in on him, which  _ also _ wouldn’t do.  He hadn’t seen her so far today- she was probably busy enjoying her stupid new castle- but it couldn’t hurt to make sure.  Speaking of Virgil, he was the one Roman was most concerned about. Patton didn’t appear to have found any trouble at all, thank goodness, and Logan looked like he was actually having a good time for once now that he’d somehow managed to turn perfectly good magic into a bunch of nerd stuff, but Virgil had been exceptionally tense last time Roman tuned in to him, and was probably having his  _ worst _ time since coming here.  Roman had a surprising amount of sympathy for him: the anxious side clearly thought himself responsible for the safety of the other two, just as Roman felt responsible for putting them in this situation at all, only he didn’t even have any way of knowing they weren’t currently in terrible danger without him.  He reached for the mirror to check on him again, and hoped he hadn’t worried himself into shutting down.

 

* * *

 

Virgil was scanning the forest around him for danger so rapidly he wasn’t sure any of what he saw was actually registering in his brain.  It had gotten a little easier to move forward once he resigned himself to the one path he was apparently meant to take, but he was also getting tired after pushing through thick brush for such a long time without finding anything of interest, and almost wished something  _ would _ happen just to break the painful tension of  _ waiting. _  Key word: almost.  He may not have been Roman, but he was genre-savvy enough not to tempt fate like that.  At the sudden sound of something disturbing the bushes nearby, he came  _ this close _ to screaming and/or throwing his knife at it before he caught a glimpse of red-brown fur near the ground.  Just a squirrel or something. He stood still for a moment to recover from  _ that _ near-heart attack, rubbing a hand over his face and taking some deep breaths as he reminded himself what he needed to do: stay calm, find the others, get out of here.  The forest didn’t seem to like him stopping, and thorns pricked at the back of his legs through his clothes, reminding him to keep moving. He exhaled harshly. He was  _ this close _ to cursing out the entire Imagination.

It was arguably fortunate, then, that he didn’t have to struggle through much longer before he stumbled out into a clearing.  His shadows swirled around him as he stopped and looked around suspiciously at the almost perfectly circular space enclosed by a solid mass of thorns, and he took a bit of comfort from the reminder that he could protect himself if he had to.  With a suspicious glance at the not-quite-there movement in the darkness of the forest around him, he slowly stepped into the middle of the clearing, as far as possible from the threatening shapes either glimpsed or imagined. There must be a way out, to continue whatever path he was being herded along- he tried to remember which way he’d come from as the thorns rapidly closed up the gap behind him.  Knowing this place, though, and its apparent hatred for him, it would probably screw him over as much as possible before letting him go.

“Shut up, shut up,” he whispered to himself with a quick shake of his head, trying to rein his mind in before it could, quite literally, give the Imagination any more ideas.  He was just going to make it worse thinking like that. There was probably just something he was missing, right? Like a patch where it wasn’t quite as thick and he could push through, or a- a secret trapdoor, or… 

Something was in the trees.

He would’ve tried to convince himself it was just a shadow, but there was no way, because shadows didn’t make  _ terrifying breathing noises _ and crush the foliage around them as they moved.  He felt almost vindicated, but also, y’know, terrified.  He turned in a slow, careful circle, tracking it as it passed.  It… didn’t  _ look _ like it had noticed him.  The thing was bigger than any animal he’d ever seen, nearly three times his height, and it wasn’t shaped like anything familiar, either.  Not that he could make it out very well. He did his best to keep from speculating.

Virgil waited, holding his breath, as the massive creature made its slow, destructive way past the clearing he was in.  He finally allowed himself a quiet sigh of relief once it seemed to be gone. Maybe that was this place’s way of showing him how to keep going?  He might be able to reach the path it had left if he pushed through the remaining layer of thornbushes, and then he could easily get to wherever it had come from, assuming nothing else went wrong.  Which was not an assumption Virgil generally made. Still, the alternative was staying in the clearing forever. He took a small step towards the edge of the trees.

And stepped on a stick that hadn’t been there before.  Which broke with an unreasonably loud crack.

The next sound Virgil heard was the deafening atonal screech of that  _ thing, _ and he barely threw himself out of the way in time as it charged at him.  Apparently it was not only the size of a small house, but also really fast when it wanted to be… and if the glimpse of it he managed to get could be trusted, it had more than should be allowed of both limbs and teeth.  Nope nope nope. He rolled when he hit the ground and made a break for the newly created opening the instant he was upright again. His magic was gathered even more thickly around his limbs now, but he didn’t have time to spare it a thought at the moment as long as it didn’t slow him down.  He was a little too busy running for his life.

 

* * *

 

Logan was fairly certain he was getting close to the end.  Or, at least, he wasn’t sure how much further things were capable of escalating from here…  There were far too many symbols in play to reliably keep track of in his head, so he was glad he’d been writing them down as he figured out what they were for.  He started the veritable Rube Goldberg machine of magic he’d just finished setting up and watched everything work precisely as intended, finally opening a door in the wall larger than any of the previous ones.  He walked through and found himself in darkness- evidently, the torch he’d been carrying from room to room wouldn’t be enough to light this particular space. That was no problem, however, once he saw a place for one of his spheres on the opposite side of the door from the torch bracket, marked with what he now knew to be the rune for light.  Once activated, a bright glow spread in all directions along a series of “wires,” and Logan gasped.

This  _ had _ to be the final puzzle.  The room was absolutely massive, and a good third of the stone mechanisms that filled it were already moving- timing would be essential here.  It looked like the fantasy version of a particularly difficult  _ Portal _ level, honestly.  The ceiling was so high it was hard to tell what was up there, but one thing he could make out was a door.  Evidently, he was supposed to get himself up there somehow. He readjusted the strap of his bag to make it more secure and looked up with a half-smile, already working out the relationships between the different parts.

“Finally, a  _ real _ challenge.”

 

* * *

 

Patton was starting to get a  _ little _ teensy bit tired of walking when he turned a corner and stopped in his tracks.  Just a few feet in front of him, not quite hidden in the brush by the path, was a red fox.  When it saw him standing there, it looked up and whined. Patton approached it carefully and crouched down.

“Hey there, little guy… oh no, what happened to you?”  Now that he was closer, he could see why the fox wasn’t running away, even though it didn’t seem as trusting as the other animals he’d been meeting: one of its legs was hurt.  He tried to get a better look, but it got nervous and limped a bit further into the bushes. “I’m not gonna hurt ya, I just want to help,” he soothed. The fox looked wary, but stopped backing away, almost as if it understood what he was saying.  “That’s it… will you let me see?”

It remained still as he moved closer again.  After a moment’s hesitation, it sat down awkwardly, holding the injured leg so he could see it.  The poor little fox seemed to have gotten on the wrong side of an especially thorny plant. Patton put his hand out slowly.  The fox regarded it uncertainly and sniffed at him, then nudged its head into his palm like a cat, seeming to accept him. (Between Patton’s limited knowledge of wild animals and the weirdness of the rest of the forest, he saw nothing strange about this.)  “Aww,” he squealed as quietly as he could manage. “You’re so soft and pretty, yes, you are!” He petted the fox’s head and ears, and while it was distracted, reached for the injury with his free hand.

The fox startled at his touch, and even more at the realization that its leg no longer hurt.  Patton pulled back and smiled at it, wincing a little when his weight shifted. “There, isn’t that better?  I told you I would help!” The fox took a step forward and licked his hand, then darted away into the forest.  He watched it go and gave himself a minute to just sit on the ground before getting up. He’d been walking for a while, after all…  Hopefully there wasn’t too much further to go.

 

* * *

 

Virgil had no way of knowing it, of course, but he looked  _ really cool _ right now.  Like an action movie hero… or possibly the protagonist of  _ Temple Run. _  It wasn’t nearly as much fun to experience in real life.  His lungs were on fire, as was every muscle in his body. He couldn’t keep going like this much longer.  He could barely stay ahead of the thing chasing him, and the branches smacking him in the face and nearly tripping him as he ran weren’t helping.  He vaulted over a large rock without slowing down and risked a glance over his shoulder.

It was a mistake.  The creature was right on his heels, lunging at him, one wrong step away from tearing him to pieces.  A new burst of panic-fueled energy coursed through his limbs at the sight. He turned back to the path ahead, pushing himself even faster-- only to skid to a stop and whirl around again when that path ended suddenly in a sheer drop.  He looked around frantically for another way out, but there was nothing. Even the way he’d just come was closing up at an impossible rate. He was trapped. Just the monster in front of him, the forest far, far below him, and Virgil trembling with exhaustion and adrenaline at the edge of a cliff.  

Time slowed down.  In the half-second remaining before, presumably, his very unpleasant demise, he tried to shield his face with his arms… and found himself staring at his hands, or at least, the area where he knew they should be.  They were barely visible, actually- difficult to make out through the dense cloud of his magic that obscured them. There was no time to think about the spark of an idea that gave him; he just acted. With death quite literally looking him in the face, now mere inches away, Virgil dropped into a defensive crouch with his eyes shut tight, felt a surge of magic wrap around his body, then turned and threw himself off the cliff.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings, in no particular order: fear/paranoia, injury, harm to an animal (but it's okay), vague body horror?, mentions of death, and some pretty intense danger
> 
> sorry about that ending, but like, not really ;)  
> the next chapter won't take nearly as long as this one did though I swear


	11. In which Logan could have had better timing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Patton finds a unicorn and Logan finds Virgil.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: this will all happen in one chapter  
> this: happens over the course of like three chapters  
> me: oh
> 
> warnings in the endnotes as usual

Logan hated to complain about the one part of this largely nonsensical world that seemed designed specifically for him, but he did wish this final section could’ve been a tad less  _ vertical. _  Everything kept moving while he was standing on it, was the thing, and sometimes he needed to jump onto other moving things, and considering that the entire structure was made of stone floating at various heights, the prospect of falling off was one he would prefer not to explore.  He was fairly confident it wouldn’t kill him or anything, given that he could not, in fact, die unless Thomas did, but it would still hurt.

The good thing about being so high up was that he’d almost made it to the top, meaning he would soon be able to reunite with the other two and get back to finding a way out of the forest.  In fact, as the slab of stone he was currently on top of floated back and forth, there was a certain point where he thought he might be able to reach the ledge in front of the exit door if he jumped.  Not that he was going to try something as risky as that, of course. No, he would just stick with the normal route of stepping across to this other platform, turning it invisible while he was standing on it so light could pass through to start it moving, and then tossing a sphere with  _ this _ symbol on it at the wall it took him over to in order to dispel the illusion making it appear close than it was and reveal a hidden alcove containing something like an elevator.  Once that went up, all he needed to do was activate the runes on the wall, and the layer of fog in front of where the elevator stopped would be transmuted into a solid stone path so that he could safely walk across to the exit.  It was really very simple.

Finally, he was standing in front of the door.  Rather than requiring a rune-engraved sphere to open, there was merely a glowing button beside it.  Logan pressed it. The door opened, as usual—but as soon as he’d stepped through to the hallway on the other side, it ground shut again, sealing away the entire complex.  Since he had no clue how he’d gotten in there to begin with and saw no way to open it from the outside, it would likely be impossible to return, not that he expected to have reason to.  He proceeded along the tunnel he’d found himself in until he emerged into sunlight.

Outside was the same forest he’d been in this whole time, although he didn’t recognize the area.  Judging by the sun, it looked to be sometime in the afternoon, but that didn’t tell him much since he didn’t know what time it had been when he’d started on the puzzles.  (Actually, he couldn’t say for certain that it was even the same day it had been when he’d fallen asleep. It was a good thing the Imagination didn’t require the sides to eat and drink regularly while they were there, or he would probably be in trouble.  For the first time, and probably the last, he was happy to prioritize an interesting narrative over realism.) He waited a moment, but nothing happened to give him an idea of what to do next, unless he was to count the raven-sized phoenix with dragon wings that flew by after a few seconds—why couldn’t Roman ever let his mythical creatures just be  _ one _ thing at a time?  There was really nothing to do except start walking and hope to run into something familiar… or maybe even some _ one, _ if he really got lucky.

Just as he was about to do that, he was stopped in his tracks by a resounding crash which sounded like it came from… well, not  _ close by _ exactly, but not too far away either.  Knowing Patton and Virgil, there was always a good chance a sound like that was one of their doing, especially with Roman already ruled out.  He made sure he didn’t look too much of a mess and headed toward the source of the noise.

 

* * *

 

After only a little more walking, Patton had found a convenient log and was now sitting on it to rest.  He rolled up his pant leg and winced. He had been thinking, optimistically, that if he healed the fox he would only have a tiny, fox-sized injury.  As it turned out, these things adjusted themselves for scale. “Ow…”

Unfortunately, a search through his pockets didn’t turn up anything he could wrap it up with, but it would probably be fine since it was under his clothes.  Although, he should probably at least wash it so it would be clean, right? He didn’t have any water on him… He stood up and looked around hopefully. Maybe… oh!  He could hear running water! He left his little path to follow the sound—being careful to pay attention to which way he went, this time, especially since it was a bit hard to see in the mist—and soon came upon a stream.  Or, wait, was it a creek? Maybe even a river? Patton didn’t really know the difference. Whatever it was, he would definitely have to swim if he wanted to cross it. Regardless, the water was cool and clear, and it seemed like a fine place to clean up.

He sat down beside the water and pulled his shoes and socks off before sticking both feet in.  It felt incredibly good, especially after walking so much over the past few imaginary days. He splashed water on his leg until it was clean, then sat for a few more minutes, just enjoying himself.  There were some tiny little fish in the water. He waved to them as they swam by. Then he wasn’t sure if they understood human waving, so he wiggled his entire body at them, just to make sure they got it.  Soon he felt nice and refreshed and ready to keep going. He put his shoes back on and got up to keep going- and gasped, as he spotted something a little ways upstream.

It was the most beautiful horse- no, wait,  _ unicorn _ he had ever seen!  Well, he’d never seen a real unicorn before, and not very many horses either, but it was just SO pretty he knew it had to be the best one there was.  He ran up to it, completely forgetting that his leg hurt, chanting  _ “oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh” _ under his breath.  It looked up and for a second he was afraid he’d spooked it, but it didn’t move from where it was, just watched him.  He slowed down, just to be safe, and it let him get right up next to it! “Hi, oh my goodness, you’re so pretty,” he cooed.  The unicorn inclined its head as if to agree. Starry-eyed, he reached up to pet it. “…Huh. You’re kinda damp. Were you getting clean too?”

Either way, it was  _ so soft, _ he didn’t want to ever stop touching it!  He took a step closer in order to bury both hands in its mane, and winced: his leg still wasn’t happy about all the walking he was doing on it, and it put a bit of a damper on his excitement and awe.  The unicorn’s ears flicked at his soft sound of pain, and as it looked over at him, he wasn’t sure whether he was imagining the appearance of concern. If it was there, he appreciated it, but… he still really wished he didn’t have to walk any more.

He was about to shake it off, forget about it and focus on appreciating the beautiful creature in front of him.  Maybe offer it some of his berries. But as soon as the thought crossed his mind, it seemed to somehow know. It bent its head again and… kneeled?... in a way Patton wasn’t sure if horses were actually capable of, but it was magical and imaginary so he figured he didn’t need to worry.  It stared at him and tossed its head with a whinny, a clear invitation. He was making so many friends today! Sure, he’d never been on a horse before in his life, but it couldn’t be too hard, right? He threw his leg clumsily over its back, and only five or so failed attempts later, he was seated atop it.  It was so nice of this unicorn to offer him a ride!

 

* * *

 

Virgil’s ability to move returned shortly after he hit the forest floor, along with the knowledge that he was going to have  _ so _ many bruises.  It was possible that jumping off a cliff was not the best idea he’d ever had.  On the bright side—insofar as there was one—nothing seemed to be broken. At least his magic had done its job.  Still, it hadn’t been the softest landing. He groaned and pushed himself to his feet slowly. No time to lie around on the ground, he needed to get back to looking for-

_ Crash. _

Virgil stumbled and nearly fell again before he could finish getting up.  The source of that small earthquake? The very same thing he  _ jumped off a cliff to get away from, _ making a small crater where it landed (small by crater standards, anyway).  He locked eyes with it and nearly froze in place, but he couldn’t freeze up now, he had to figure out how to  _ not die. _  He knew he couldn’t just keep running away indefinitely, even if he dared look away long enough to find somewhere to run to.  It swiped at him—lazy in comparison to the speed he’d seen it use before, a cat playing with a doomed mouse—and all he could do was throw up a shield around himself with the remaining part of his defensive magic.  He was safe inside it, but trapped. At least he could catch his breath. He watched the shape of his monstrous pursuer pacing around the outside of his protective sphere, and hoped in vain that it would lose interest in him and go back to wherever it came from.

He didn’t have much time to hope before he heard something that made his blood run cold.

_ “Hello?  Patton? Virgil?  …Anyone?” _

The creature heard it, too.  Virgil saw its head snap up in the direction of Logan’s distant voice.   _ Shut up, shut up, _ he willed silently, but apparently Logan wasn’t telepathic.  He called out again, slightly closer this time. The creature gave one more glance to its current target, unreachable in a bubble, and turned away to chase after much easier prey.  Virgil felt the heat spark in his hands and didn’t hesitate. “Hey!”

He broke through his shield and lunged for the monster as it whirled around to face him.  He didn’t even get close before it made a grab at him with several limbs. Barely avoiding its grasp, he was still thrown against a tree by what little contact it made, the air knocked out of his lungs.  There was no time to stop and catch his breath, not when it was already charging to finish him off. No time to get out of the way, either, even if he hadn’t been dazed. With few options left, Virgil threw himself to the ground and rolled.  It hadn’t expected that. The tree didn’t stop it in the slightest, but it did slow it down—just long enough for him to look up, gather his energy and shove the magic currently crackling in his hands into its body.

The Imagination didn’t like too much mess.  The monster howled once more, a sound like an untuned orchestra, and dissolved into black dust.

 

* * *

 

Logan ran into the clearing—there hadn’t been a clearing here  _ before, _ necessarily, but there certainly was one now—to find Virgil, dusted with some sort of powder, lying on the ground and looking like… well, pretty much like someone who had just done all the things he’d just done.  Logan hurried over and offered him a hand up. “Are you alright? What was all that noise?”

Virgil staggered to his feet and leaned on him heavily.  His hands were strangely warm. “Logan,” he breathed, ignoring his questions.  He took a step back to make sure  _ he _ wasn’t hurt.  Once he was satisfied and a little more stable, he finally explained.  “There was this, like, monster thing chasing me, and I jumped off a cliff-”

“You  _ what?!” _

“-I know, okay, I’m not dead or anything, but it followed me and I was just going to make a shield and wait for it to get bored, but then it heard you yelling—you don’t  _ do _ that when you’re wandering around in a magic forest, idiot—and it was gonna go after  _ you _ so I kinda had to fight it, and basically today is the  _ worst. _  If you ever want to get me in this stupid realm again after this is over, you’re gonna have to knock me out and carry me.”

“I know the feeling,” Logan sighed.  He elected not to mention that his own experience today had been fairly enjoyable, at least not until Virgil calmed down.  “Do you want to sit and rest for a few minutes?”

“Wait, where… Patton’s not with you?”

“I’m afraid I haven’t seen him.”

Virgil groaned.  “We have to find him  _ now.” _  He was going through a series of flashbacks to every probably-dangerous thing he’d had to drag Patton away from in this forest.

Logan frowned.  From the look of him, the only thing Virgil should have been finding right now was somewhere to take a nap, but he knew he’d be too stubborn to agree.  “At least allow me to look you over for injuries first. It won’t matter once we reunite with Patton, of course, but there should be something I can do in the meantime.”

“…Fine.”  Virgil located a suitable rock to sit on, shrugged out of his robes and—rather self-consciously—took off his shirt.  Logan only had to look at him for half a second before he winced and started digging through his bag.

“What on earth  _ happened _ to you?”

“I… jumped off a cliff and fought a monster?”

“Right.”

Things were silent, yet not uncomfortable, while Logan found what he needed and started to patch Virgil up.  It couldn’t last forever, though. Virgil had to ruin it, just like everything else.

“Hey… Logan?”

“Hmm?”  He was absorbed in what he was doing, but pulled part of his attention away to listen.

“I gotta tell you something.”

Ah.  That meant it was something serious, otherwise he would’ve just said it without first declaring his intent to do so.  “I’m listening,” he assured him.

“Well… um.”  He paused, wincing only partially because of Logan’s prodding.  “You know how… things kinda keep going wrong for us?”

“Unfortunately.”

“Yeah, I think… I’m pretty sure that’s because of me.”

Logan’s hands stopped moving.  “What makes you believe that?”

He looked at the ground and spoke in a rush, trying to get it over with.  “You know Roman said we can influence our surroundings in here, and I- every time something bad happens, it’s something I was worried about.  Everyone turning on us back in Deercross because  _ I _ looked scary—even before that, I kept thinking you were gonna trip and then you did—and this, this stupid  _ forest, _ I was the one convinced there had to be something scary in here and guess what!  Do you think it’s a coincidence that I was the one on watch when those creepy fog dudes showed up and separated us?”

“What creepy-”

“There were creepy fog dudes, they knocked me out, I’m guessing they’re the reason we woke up in different places.  And unless you were  _ also _ running away from a huge terrifying monster, that was my own fault too.  …You probably would’ve been better off finding Patton and not me, I’m only gonna-”

“Virgil,  _ no.” _

“What?”

“You did not cause those things.”

He turned around.  “What are you talking about?  How could I not have?”

“You’re jumping to conclusions.  I spoke with Roman last night-”

“Wait, how?”

Logan waved a hand dismissively.  “Oh, you know,  _ magic. _  I can show you how it was done after we’ve found Patton, since he wanted to see you two as well.  In any case, according to what he told me, that Dragon Witch of his has managed to gain some amount of control over his realm.  Not only that, but he seemed to imply the Imagination has something of a mind of its own. Between the two, it’s unlikely things would have gone smoothly under  _ any _ circumstances.”

“…Oh.”  Virgil stared at him, taking that information in and trying not to think about its implications too much.

“The pattens, for instance, I’ll admit would have been my downfall no matter what.  I didn’t entirely think them through with regards to the terrain we were going to be on.”

“Patton’s gonna be real sad he wasn’t here to see you make a pun.”

“Do  _ not _ tell him.”

He laughed behind his hand.  “Got it.”

They faded back to quiet until, a couple of minutes later, Logan packed everything back into his bag and handed Virgil his shirt.  “That ought to hold you until you can be properly healed.”

“Thanks.”  Virgil re-dressed himself quickly and stood up, which was much easier now with whatever fantasy-ointment Logan had put on him taking away some of the soreness.  “Do we just… start walking?”

“Unless you have any better ideas.  If this place cares about a good story as much as it seems to, it won’t allow us to wander in circles for too long without at least finding  _ something.” _

“Right.  Well… here’s hoping that ‘something’ turns out to be Patton.”  He wasn’t going to say it out loud, because again, he knew better than to tempt fate like that, but if Virgil had to see  _ one _ more thing today that wanted to kill him he was gonna  _ riot. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: most of the same things from last chapter really, plus some Virgil Talking Bad About Himself


	12. In which Patton's friend-making skills turn out to be very useful

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Patton is a useless gay. Virgil complains. Roman learns what he missed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ive had this chapter mostly finished for way too long oops
> 
> warnings in endnotes

Patton was quickly beginning to suspect the unicorn didn’t actually understand what he wanted as well as it had seemed to.  He did not, for example, especially want it to turn around after a few steps and start walking right into the water.

“Uh… buddy?  Whatcha doin’ there?”

The unicorn didn’t answer, probably because it didn’t have a mouth that could form English words, and now Patton’s socks were getting wet after he’d gone to the trouble earlier of keeping them out of the water.

“Okay, um… thank you for trying to help, but I don’t think this is working.”  Patton decided to just slide off the unicorn’s back and make his own way out of the forest. 

He tried, anyway.  He was no expert on horses, or unicorns, or… pretty much anything, really… but he was _fairly_ certain you weren’t supposed to stick to them.  He would have had no qualms about taking off his pants—that went for _most_ situations, really; Patton didn’t have a very good concept of shame—but it wouldn’t have helped, because he couldn’t seem to untangle his hands from its oh-so-soft mane, either.  “Well,” he said to himself.  “That’s not good.”

… Okay, he didn’t want to panic, but the water was up to his waist now.  The current pulled at his cloak, and he would have fallen over if he weren’t so, you know, stuck.  He made another attempt to free himself: “Hey, I don’t know what’s happening right now, but, uh- please stop!”  The unicorn turned its head to look back at him and made its best approximation of a smile.  Which, on a horse face, was downright creepy.  It didn’t slow its steady progress into the river, and the water crept up to Patton’s shoulders.  It didn’t look like there was anything he could _do._   He really wished his friends were here to help him…

“Watch out!”

He twisted around in surprise, just in time to see a man at the edge of the water shoot an arrow towards the unicorn.  He didn’t see whether it hit or not, but in the next moment, he was free and it had run off somewhere.  It was a bit difficult with the weight of his sodden clothes, but Patton struggled to the edge of the river before dropping to his knees to catch his breath.

“Are you alright?”  The man who’d just saved him put away his bow and offered a hand.  …Oh no, he was cute.  Windswept, copper-colored hair and shining dark eyes, not to mention that he had, you know, just _saved Patton’s life._   Under the circumstances, he kind of forgot how to function.  He stared for a good few seconds, still kneeling in the shallow water, before he took the man’s hand and got to his feet.

“I- oh my gosh, I don’t know how to-”

“No need to thank me,” the man interrupted, rubbing the back of his neck and looking embarrassed.  “…Consider us even.”  Then he smiled, which easily made Patton forget how odd that statement was.

“Can I at least know who saved me, then?”

He hesitated.  “Call me Ren.  It’s, uh, French.”

Patton blinked at that, being fairly certain it wasn’t, but it didn’t bother him for long.  “Oh, that’s a nice name!  I’m Patton!”  Ren appeared confused by his attempt to shake his hand.  This may have been partially because he hadn’t yet let go of it after being helped up.  Patton laughed awkwardly and let him go.  “Well, um… it was good to meet you, Ren.”

“You as well, Patton.  Please try to be a bit less trusting in the future?”

“No promises,” Patton joked, as Ren started to turn and walk away.  “Wait!  Um- you don’t happen to have seen my friends, have you?  We kind of got separated…”

He paused and thought about it.  “I can’t say for sure it’s who you’re looking for, but I did see someone unfamiliar over… _that_ way.”  He indicated upstream, opposite of the way Patton had been thinking to go. 

“Oh!” Patton automatically looked where he was pointing, and by the time he turned back around, Ren had vanished.  “Well… thank you, wherever you went.”  Although disappointed that he’d left so soon, he shrugged and started to walk.  It was more important to find his friends.

 

* * *

 

“Hey, Logan.”

“Hmm?”

The two were still walking, and Virgil was starting to have a bad feeling about that fact.  “Do you wanna tell me what the chances are, realistically, that we’ll actually ever find Patton like this?”

“Not particularly.”

That was what he’d been afraid of.

“Fortunately, I also do not think it matters.  As I’ve said, the laws of probability fall apart in here.  It seems more likely than anything else that we’ll come across him whenever it’s _narratively_ appropriate.”

Suddenly, they caught the familiar sound of vague, off-key humming somewhere ahead of them, and Virgil looked at him hopefully.  “You mean like right now?”

 

* * *

 

Patton had been following the river for some time, and nothing had happened since Ren left.  His clothes were still soaked, and his leg still hurt, and he still didn’t know where his friends were.  He’d started singing to himself for entertainment and mood-lightening purposes, but it didn’t help as much as he wanted it to.  This… wasn’t fun anymore.  He looked down at his cloak as he walked, wondering if it would be better to just take it off until it dried—and looked up to see Logan and Virgil running toward him!

He rushed to meet them; he’d be bouncing in place if his leg didn’t hurt.  “I’m so happy to see you guys again!  I don’t know what happened, I just- woke up somewhere else…  Are you both okay?”

_“I_ know what happened,” Virgil growled, “this stupid forest split us up.  But- what happened to _you?!”_ he demanded, noticing how Patton was favoring one leg.  “You got hurt, didn’t you?”

“And why are you wet?” Logan questioned, since everything urgent had already been covered.  “Don’t you know better than to go around jumping in streams with your clothes on?”

Okay, that stung a little, considering how hard he’d tried to _not_ do that.  Patton winced.  “It’s a long story.”  And one he’d rather forget right now, honestly.

Virgil didn’t care about that; he was taking Patton’s arm and pulling him over to a tree he could sit down against.  “Let me see your leg- Logan, you still have those bandages, right?  What did you _do_ to yourself?”

Patton looked sheepish.  “There was this fox…”

He sighed.  “Pat, I keep telling you, you can’t just go up and pet wild animals.”  Patton couldn’t exactly explain the real situation, so he just hummed in a “yeah, you’re right” sort of way.

Logan found his medical supplies easily, since they were already on top of his bag, and it took an equally brief amount of time to work his medicinal arts on Patton’s leg.  “I take it your healing abilities don’t extend to yourself, then?  That seems rather inconvenient.”

A strange, pained look crossed Patton’s face.  “Yeah… I guess the point is to help other people with them, not me.”

“I suppose.”  He packed his things away.  “With any luck, we’ll soon be out of this forest, and we can all rest and recover.  Speaking of which…”  He’d known Virgil wouldn’t let Patton heal him until his own injury was taken care of, but now he thought he’d better bring it up.  He didn’t want him trying to continue walking in this condition because he placed more importance on getting out of the forest than his own health, or some other such irrational thing.  “I believe Virgil could certainly do with some of that help right now.”

Virgil bit his lip.  “Oh.  Um… yeah.  I just didn’t want to- I mean, if you’re hurt too, I felt like that was more urgent…”

“Well, I’m okay now, so let me see?”

He nodded awkwardly and, once again, got halfway undressed in the middle of a forest.  Patton winced at the amount of bandages covering him, then winced even more when he saw what was underneath.

“Yeesh, you really got knocked around, huh, kiddo?”  Patton gently laid his hand on Virgil’s shoulder, moving it over his torso until the soft blue light of his magic had erased all the damage.  Yep, he was right, that hurt pretty bad.  He tried to keep his hand from shaking as he finished the job.  When he was done and Virgil was sorting out the layers of his robes to put them back on, he gave himself a few seconds to close his eyes and breathe.  He opened them again to find both his friends giving him worried looks.

“Is something wrong?” asked Logan.

He forced a laugh, which didn’t feel great with his newly-very-sore ribs.  “Took some concentration to do all that, is all.”

Neither of them seemed entirely satisfied, but they let it go for now.  Virgil stood up and stretched.

“Thanks, Patton.  Now can we please get out of here?”

 

* * *

 

Roman had been unable to relax all day.  Thank goodness his friends had finally overcome their challenges and found each other!  He… probably owed them all an apology after that, even though technically speaking none of it had been his fault.  They _were_ only here in the first place because he asked them to come, after all.  And he would really rather not get yelled at again.

Now that the forest had served its purpose, it didn’t take more than a thirty-minute walk for the three adventurers to find their way out of it.  The giant spider from the previous day considered having one more go at them, but thought better of it upon seeing Virgil’s face, and they reached the edge of the trees without further incident.  Both Virgil and Patton let out a relieved breath when they could no longer feel the magic of the forest around them.  They came out much more tired and subdued than they had gone in, and evening was approaching faster than they would have liked.  The three set up camp for the night in the less dense, not to mention far less magical wooded area between the forest proper and the open field beyond it.

A fire was started- partly because it felt safer that way, partly because Patton really needed to get his clothes dry so he wouldn’t catch cold sleeping in them.  It seemed like it was going to take a while, however, since he still refused to take his cloak off.

“So… what happened to you two earlier, when we were separated?” he asked once they were all settled around the fire.  Virgil folded his arms, looking away, and was saved from immediately having to answer by Logan.

“Before we talk about that-” he rummaged through his bag- “as I already told Virgil, I’ve found a way to contact Roman again, and I expect he’d like to hear about those events as well.”

Patton brightened.  “Really?  We can talk to him?”

He nodded.  “Just give me a minute to set this up.”

It took rather longer than that, but soon enough, they were clustered around Logan as he held the mirror.  He finished activating it, and their own reflections were replaced with Roman, who was trying to look cool, but like, without looking like he was _trying_ to look cool, y’know?  Anyway, it didn’t work and he looked like a big dork instead, but that was fine because they all knew he was a dork already.

“You look like the biggest dork I’ve ever seen, what are you even going for?” Virgil said immediately.

Roman stopped posing and made a face at him.  “Wrong, you saw Logan the other day when he’d just come up with his outfit.”

“True.”

Logan opened his mouth to protest, but Patton cut in with a squeal.  _“Roman!_   I missed seeing you so much, oh my gosh, are you doing okay?”

“I’m glad you asked, Patton.  I’m dying, actually, of boredom, so please hurry up or I’m not going to survive.”  He did his best impression of someone about to faint dead away, and Patton gasped obligingly.

“Oh no!”

“Oh, are we talking near-death experiences now?” Virgil interrupted, “Because _let me tell you about the day I’ve been having.”_

Roman dropped the impression with a wince.  “Yes, um… I imagine you’d like to.  I did, ah, see some of it…”

“I get attacked by these weird shadow-things and then wake up in the middle of _nowhere,_ and it’s all dark and silent and ominous, and the _first living thing I see_ is a giant terrifying monster that immediately starts trying to kill me, and I jump off a cliff, right, which yeah that was kind of stupid, but then it’s still trying to kill me and now _Logan’s_ there and it’s gonna kill _him_ because no offense Logan but you don’t run very fast so I had to freaking _kill the thing_ and I almost died like _eight times,_ Patton had to heal, like, my entire upper body, but I’m _so_ sorry you’ve been _bored.”_

“Sorry about that,” Roman offered weakly.  “I mean it’s not like _I_ made any of it happen, but I probably should have warned you about the… challenges.”  He waved a hand vaguely to indicate… challenges.  “They happen?  It wouldn’t have actually killed you, if that makes you feel any better.”

“It doesn’t, thanks.”

There was a very awkward silence until Patton took it upon himself to fix that and asked, “What was yours, Logan?”

“Nothing near as perilous, thankfully.  In fact, it was quite useful.  I found myself in a series of connected underground rooms and needed to open the doors between them by… well, essentially solving magic puzzles.  I believe the notes I took on those mechanisms could be applied equally to the materials in my bag.”

“Very nerdy of you, well done.  How about yours, Patton?  I’ll admit I didn’t watch you as closely as those two, but it seemed like you were having a good time?”

“I was!  …For most of it, at least.  Until I hurt my leg and got stuck to a unicorn and it tried to drown me.  But it was okay, because someone helped me!”

“You _what?!”_ Virgil and Logan exclaimed at the same time.  Roman just winced again.

“I… also probably should have warned you about kelpies.  At least it worked out?”

“Yep!  I even made a friend.”  He frowned slightly.  “Too bad I’ll probably never go back to that forest again to see him.”

“I’m sorry, can we talk about the part where _you almost died?”_

“Again, it wouldn’t have actually…”  Roman trailed off at the look Virgil was giving him.  “Sorry.  If I tell you everything I can about the last remaining part of your journey, will you stop glaring at me like that?”

“We’ll see.  Start talking.”

 

* * *

 

By the time Roman finished telling the other three about every potential obstacle he could think of in the final stretch between here and the castle, it was late at night.  They said their goodnights and promised to talk again in the morning, and Logan deactivated his mirror so they could all go to bed.  None of them felt they could stay awake long enough to keep watch after the events of the day, and it hadn’t done them any good last time, anyway, so they didn’t bother.  Patton curled up under his cloak, Virgil stretched out near the fire without even making the effort to take his boots off, and Logan made sure all his supplies were in order before lying down near the two of them.  They were all fast asleep within fifteen minutes.

Or so it seemed.  After another five minutes, just to be safe, Patton opened his eyes and sat up gingerly.  It would’ve been hard staying awake that long if he weren’t in so much pain right now.  Staying as quiet as possible, he crept over to Logan.  “Hope you don’t mind if I borrow this,” he whispered, softly enough to avoid waking him up.  He took the bag of supplies and moved a little distance off to tend his various, now _very numerous_ injuries without disturbing his friends.

 

* * *

 

Roman, who had not in fact gone to bed after Logan “hung up” on him, turned away from his mirror, feeling sick.  Patton… how long had he been hiding this?  _Why?_   Well… okay, Roman would be a hypocrite if he said he had no idea why Patton would do such a thing, but… it was so _wrong_ that their dear, sweet puffball should be taking on so much pain by himself.

Patton might be angry with him—and oh, that would just break Roman’s heart—but he couldn’t be allowed to continue like this.  When Roman spoke with the others again in the morning, he resolved to himself, he was going to tell them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: almost drowning, injuries (nothing new), spider for .5 seconds, death mentions

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If there's anything you want me to warn for should it come up in future chapters, or you just wanna talk about the fic, leave a comment (okay, obvious) or find me as @do-your-socks-have-holes-in-them on Tumblr (see, that WAS going somewhere!)
> 
> Updates will probably be erratic, because... school, man... but know that I am trying my best.


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